Examining a community-based theatre program as a source of resilience and well-being among Indigenous youth in Saskatoon: Final report

Indigenous youth populations in Canada are rapidly growing and continually face health inequities. To address these issues, this project explores the relationships between participation in the COV arts-based theatre program and resilience and wellness outcomes for Indigenous youth living in urban contexts. Within this framework, our research approach is grounded in a “two-eyed seeing” community-based participatory context where Indigenous community and academic expertise collaborate to co-execute research objectives. Two-eyed seeing holds that there are diverse understandings of the world and that by acknowledging and respecting a diversity of perspectives (without perpetuating the dominance of one over another) we can build an understanding of health and wellness that lends itself to dealing with some of the most pressing issues facing Indigenous youth today . A transformative framework also draws on critical Indigenous and anti-oppressive theories that focus attention on the political and moral concerns arising from the history of colonialism, and how this history shapes the everyday experiences of those who have been marginalized. At the same time, this lens focuses on revealing cultural strengths, local Indigenous knowledge, and positive aspects of a community that are needed to promote resilience, health equity, improved well-being, and social change.