TL;DR

Following up our 2019 National Youth Reconciliation Barometer, the Indigenous Youth Reconciliation Barometer 2024 engaged solely with Indigenous youth to better understand how they envision their own empowerment and futures through exploring themes like culture, wellness, education, meaningful work, solidarity and reconciliation. Through this project, we engaged with 1,125 Indigenous youth from coast-to-coast-to-coast.

Status

Details

Led by the Centre for Indigenous Policy and Research at Indigenous Youth Roots, and building off the National Youth Reconciliation Barometer (2019), the Indigenous Youth Reconciliation Barometer 2024 focuses on how Indigenous youth (ages 18-29) envision their futures. This in-depth report delves into themes such as culture, wellness, education, meaningful work, solidarity, and reconciliation, identifying the barriers to their progress and showcasing the visions and hopes Indigenous youth hold for their thriving futures. 

To capture a diversity of voices, we engaged 1,125 youth through in-person and online sharing circles, as well as an online survey. Youth actively participated throughout the research process—supporting, leading, and contributing at every stage—emphasizing their role as empowered and dynamic leaders within their communities.  

The full report is available as one document, with the four themes presented within the report also available to read and download separately. At the moment, the full report is available in English and French.

We are so grateful to all the Indigenous youth and community partners that made this project possible and look forward to continuing to advocate for, and amplify their priorities following the release of the report.  

View the full report: Indigenous Youth Reconciliation Barometer 2024: Building Connected Futures

In English

En Français

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

Indigenous Youth Roots is committed to Indigenous data sovereignty.  We recognize that Indigenous communities are the owners of their data, and conduct our research engagements in a respectful, reciprocal manner.  We aim to build meaningful relationships with Indigenous youth and communities in our engagements.   

In the Indigenous Youth Reconciliation Barometer 2024, we ensured that participants were informed of how their data would be stored and what it would be used for.  We let participants know that they were able to remove themselves from the data at any point during the project.   

If you have any questions about how we conduct our research engagements and our approach to data, please reach out to the Centre for Indigenous Policy and Research at: Centre@indigenousyouthroots.ca  

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.

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!

  • Eva Jewell

    ,

    Barometer Advisory Circle Member

  • 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

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 2024 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.

For More Information

Tija Hauta

(she/her)

Manager of Policy and Research

Open

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