TL;DR
Following up our 2019 National Youth Reconciliation Barometer the Indigenous Youth Reconciliation Barometer 2.0 will be engaging solely with Indigenous youth to better understand how Indigenous youth envision their own empowerment and futures by exploring everything from culture and wellness to solidarity, reconciliation, and meaningful work.
Status
Closed
Details
Following up our 2019 National Youth Reconciliation Barometer the Indigenous Youth Reconciliation Barometer 2.0 will be engaging solely with Indigenous youth to better understand how Indigenous youth envision their own empowerment and futures by exploring everything from culture and wellness to solidarity, reconciliation, and meaningful work. Project activities will be guided by an Advisory Circle and will culminate in a report which can be used to inform policy decisions that impact Indigenous youth and their communities. This large-scale research project in collaboration with Mastercard Foundation and with support from The Firelight Group!
Our engagements will consist of six in-person sharing circles from coast to coast to coast, as well as an online survey. All in-person engagements and the survey will be open to self-identifying Indigenous youth ages 18-29 living in Canada, with in-person engagements being open to local Indigenous youth. In-person engagement and survey participants will all receive an honorarium! We can’t wait for you to be a part of this initiative.
Before signing up for in-person sessions, or completing the survey please read through all of the important information on this project below. Keep watching our socials and website for when registration for the other sessions is open, and for when our survey launches!
Thank you for participating in the Indigenous Youth Reconciliation Barometer 2.0, the survey is now closed!
Once the engagement activities are complete, we will be completing a report alongside the Firelight Group which will highlight important outcomes from this large research project. Further, it is our hope that this research can be used to help guide policies and programs that affect Indigenous youth and their communities.
The final report will be shared with participants prior to completion to ensure perspectives and priorities are reflected. The report is set to be launched in Summer 2024.
The report will be available in both French and English as well as 2-3 Indigenous languages to be identified by the Advisory Circle. **Stay Tuned**
IYR’s Engagement Approach
IYR has a wide range of experience running successful engagements. Guided by our Engagement Framework, our focus is on running effective and meaningful sessions that provided space for Indigenous youth to express their voices and feel heard.
IYR’s commitment to active, ethical engagement with Indigenous youth is expressed in our Engagement Framework and is built upon several key guiding principles, outlined below. As an organization that exists as a platform for amplifying the voices of Indigenous youth, we set these same standards for partners looking to engage with Indigenous youth through IYR:
Respect & Reciprocity
Ensuring all relationships built are reciprocal in nature with the best interest of Indigenous youth in mind, IYR centers reciprocity in engagement as a practice that denotes respect and responsibility in our relationships. In building respectful, reciprocal relationships with Indigenous youth, our team does rigorous pre-engagement research; respects the time and capacity of youth; commits to ongoing communication before, after, and during the engagement; remains flexible and fluid about engagement structure and process; and seeks to always be accountable to the communities we serve by being open and responsive to feedback on our work.
Cultural Safety
IYR understands cultural safety to be a form of harm reduction focused on creating spaces that are cognizant and respectful of individual and community traditions, protocols, and contexts. This means that we prioritize the cultural, emotional, and physical safety of Indigenous youth by ensuring all our work is distinctions-based, culturally relevant, and embedded with anti-oppressive and harm reduction practices. This can take many forms but often includes ensuring Elders and support workers are present for our conversations with youth, observing proper local protocols, creating smudging spaces in buildings, and reflecting on what the land we’re working on means to us through land acknowledgements.
Data Sovereignty
With an awareness of historical and contemporary ways that Indigenous knowledge has been extracted and misrepresented, protecting the knowledge and wisdom of Indigenous youth and their communities is crucial to how IYR approaches engagement. Following OCAP principles, we work to ensure that Indigenous youth are always the primary beneficiaries and owners of their knowledge and information.
IYR’s Approach to Data Ownership
As per our engagement framework, IYR is committed to Indigenous data sovereignty and conducts our research engagements under the guidance of both OCAP and the 4Rs of Indigenous research.
The principles of OCAP are as follows:
- Ownership: Refers to the relationship between Indigenous peoples and their data; communities are their own data stewards.
- Control: Indigenous people own, protect and control how their information is used.
- Access: Indigenous communities must have access to information and data about themselves, regardless of where that information is held.
- Possession: Differing from ownership, this refers to the physical control of data.
The principles of the 4Rs of Indigenous research are as follows:
- Respect: Valuing the distinct cultures of Indigenous peoples and their diverse knowledge and experiences.
- Relevance: Learning what is important to different communities, focusing on meaningful communication, relationship building and shared understanding.
- Reciprocity: The research must be mutually beneficial to researchers and participants.
- Responsibility: This is achieved through active and rigorous engagement and participation. The researcher has the responsibility to uphold the community’s values, practices, and ways of knowing.
- In our research, IYR practices an additional ‘R’ principle; Relationships. Relationships are meant to be reciprocal on behalf of the researcher and collaborator. Work should foster the growth of relationships and the community
Although IYR is not governed by this Act (as we do not engage in commercial activity), IYR also aims to follow the principles of The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), as we believe it is in IYR’s best interests and the best interests of our participants. PIPEDA can be summarized by ten fair information principles, which IYR aims to follow the best it can:
- Accountability: The organization responsible for collecting the data must appoint a “Privacy Officer” to ensure PIPEDA compliance.
- Identifying Purposes: The organization must identify the purpose of the information it collects.
- Consent: The organization must obtain consent for the collection, use, or sharing of data.
- Limiting Collection: Only personal information identified by the organization can be collected.
- Limiting Use, Disclosure, and Retention: The organization must only share and use data for purposes identified by the organization. Information shall be retained only for as long as it is required to fulfill its identified purposes.
- Accuracy: Personal information collected must be accurate, complete, and up to date.
- Safeguards: The organization must implement security measures to protect the personal information it collects.
- Openness: The organization must make its personal information policies and practices available and accessible to individuals.
- Individual Access: Program participants have the right to access and change the personal information collected by the organization.
- Challenging Compliance: Program participants are able to challenge the organization’s compliance with PIPEDA.
Firelight’s Approach to Data Ownership
Firelight seeks every opportunity to support and advocate for self-determination and data sovereignty for Indigenous communities and organizations. This includes ensuring Indigenous principles of ownership, access, control, and possession with respect to data collection processes are upheld. Notwithstanding any other statement in this proposal, the information collected, and reports produced through the proposed Study will be considered the sole property of IYR. In addition, Firelight uses a number of practices to ensure the security of client data including:
- Ensuring project managers and leads are all university-trained researchers who have a background in protocols with, and management of, sensitive personal data.
- Requiring all staff abide by a confidentiality policy and code of conduct; and,
- Utilizing a secure file-sharing platform called Sharefile where files are password protected and use of uploaded information is logged. Through dialogue with the client, details outlining the conditions of access to, privacy, and/or ownership of project and/or community information will be clearly outlined at the earliest stage possible.
Barometer Advisory Circle
To ensure engagement is guided by community priorities, subject matter experts have been asked to support in the form of an advisory circle. We are grateful for the time and knowledge that each member has and continues to share with us!
Larissa Crawford
,
Barometer Advisory Circle Member
Ruth Kaviok
,
Barometer Advisory Circle Member
Logan Beauchamp
,
Barometer Advisory Circle Member
Marrissa Mathews
,
Barometer Advisory Circle Member
Carrington Christmas
,
Barometer Advisory Circle Member
Partnerships
Funder: Mastercard Foundation
This project is funded by Mastercard Foundation (the Foundation) through their EleV Program, and by IYR, with the majority of funding coming from the Foundation. The first iteration of this project, the National Youth Reconciliation Barometer, was also supported by the Foundation.
As per the Foundation, here you can find a bit more information about EleV:
- The goal of the EleV Program: “The vision for EleV – a vision co-created and confirmed with Indigenous youth and communities – is for Indigenous young people to be living Mino Bimaadiziwin, which means ‘a good life’ in the Anishinaabe language. EleV’s goal is for education and employment systems to be transformed to enable 100,000 Indigenous young people to access post-secondary education and transition to meaningful livelihoods by 2030. It is an ambitious goal, but we are not walking this road alone nor are we leading the way. We know the solutions are found in the vision and values of Indigenous youth. Our role is to support their initiatives, their efforts, and their ideas for transformative change”*
- Strategic Outcomes of the EleV Program: “Achieving this goal requires action to ensure:
- Indigenous youth access and succeed in transformed education and training systems reflecting Indigenous ways of knowing, being and learning.
- Indigenous youth have access and opportunities, and can successfully transition to meaningful livelihoods.”
The goals of the Barometer 2.0 align in many ways with those of the EleV Program, and in line with those the following objectives were identified:
- Gain an understanding of what Indigenous youth-guided priorities across education and economic sectors should look like;
- Fill existing research gaps about Indigenous youth empowerment and futures;
- Demonstrate forward-looking youth priorities in hopes to inform policy and program decisions at the local, provincial/territorial, and national levels; and
- Impact meaningful and sustainable systems change, as led, and defined by Indigenous youth.
As we explore many important and complex themes throughout the project, the way in which we speak to them and how they come through in the final research is yet to be defined and will remain flexible and fluid, to be defined as we progress through the various stages of the project. Ensuring the project narrative is guided by youth is our main priority to ensure the data truly serves the community and can be used to support ongoing efforts by youth to advance community interests and well-being.
*It is worth noting, that the vision of EleV “Mino Bimaadiziwin” does come from the Anishinaabe language, however, both the goals of their program, as well as the wider project goals of the Barometer are for all Indigenous youth from coast-coast-coast
Research Partner: The Firelight Group
We are very excited to be working with The Firelight Group, an Indigenous-owned consulting group that works with Indigenous communities in research, policy, and other areas! As we are hoping to engage with over one thousand youth as part of this project, we are working with Firelight to utilize their expertise and experience in analyzing data.
