Oskayak Miyoyawin (Youth Wellness) ~ Métis Youth Perspectives on Intergenerational Wellness Reflected through A Research Project Logo

ABSTRACT

Intergenerational health and wellness promotion among Métis peoples in Canada is emerging as a priority for Métis communities. Our team is engaged with an intergenerational and lifecourse-oriented program of research on aging well in collaboration with a northern Saskatchewan Métis community (in Canada). We employ a community-engaged participatory action methodology that integrates Métis and Western perspectives through iterative cycles of planning, implementing, and action. Métis perspectives are provided by two Métis community leads and Western perspectives by two non-Métis team leads from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Our research program commenced with the development of a program logo which was created by two Métis community youth. We reflect on the intergeneratiaonl health and wellness symbols and significance of this research program logo as our research has progressed. It has become clear that the logo may provide a nascent Métis intergenerational wellness framework that aligns with what we are learning from Métis research participants (young and old). Further, the logo aligns with Indigenous theory and a framework that has informed our original research proposal. In this “advancing the field paper” we introduce the logo and describe its relevance to intergenerational wellbeing among Métis peoples.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous
• intergenerational
• youth
• older adults
• health & wellness framework

Background & rationale

Intergenerational health and wellness promotion among Métis peoples in Canada is emerging as a priority for Métis communities as they support both a large young population and growing aging population. Our team is engaged with an intergenerational and lifecourse oriented program of research on aging well in place in collaboration with a northern Saskatchewan Métis community. The goal is to inform best practice to support community member aspirations for being well. Underpinning this objective is the imperative to frame findings through community-specific lenses on well-being. We employ a community-engaged participatory action methodology that integrates Métis and Western perspectives through iterative cycles of planning, implementing, and action. Two team leads (LD, TJR) from a Métis community in northern Saskatchewan bring expertise in Michif language, culture, ways of knowing and doing. The other two team leads are non-Métis from the University of Saskatchewan (Department of Community Health & Epidemiology (SA), and the School of Rehabilitation Science (SO)) and are Western trained. We work closely with a group of community Elders (incorporated as the Sakitawak Elders Group, Inc.) whose primary goal is strengthening self-reliance and independent living for the Elders of their community (https://www.ilexelders.com/). One of our first team activities was to create a program logo. Two community youth (CL, SC) were contracted for this task. As the research progressed the logo took on new significance as a nascent intergenerational wellness framework that reflected what we were learning in our interactions with older adults and youth. The logo’s alignment with the Indigenous theory (Blackstock, 2011) and framework (Blackstock, 2007) that had informed our funding proposal was also clear. In this paper we introduce this logo and describe its relevance to the intergenerational field and broader concepts of intergenerational wellbeing among Indigenous peoples.

Introducing the Métis youth logo

Young adults engaging in our research program were also participating in community-driven leadership programming that included diverse community, intergenerational, land and culture-based activities. Two artists from this group of young leaders expressed interest in designing and creating our research program logo. They were asked to depict their perspectives on what it means to be well, to grow up well, and to age well as Métis people. The logo was created in an iterative process over the course of one year primarily between the 2 young Métis adults and 2 Métis research leads (LD and TJR), and later included the 2 academic leads (SA and SO). One of the community research co-leads on the project (LD) worked most closely with the youth developing the logo. The two youth artists met regularly with LD over 6–8 months as she responded to their questions and supported them in recalling the Métis-specific teachings received from family and Knowledge Keepers. Rather than requiring resolution, differences in perspective, some of them generational, are reflected in the logo. This was accomplished through a process of consensus building via conversations about collective and individual knowledge and life experience. Several logo drafts were shared with the Sakitawak Elders Group (SEG) Inc. for their input, providing the youth with an opportunity to present and explain their logo, to receive feedback for logo revision, and to open opportunity for the youth to engage iteratively with the SEG Inc. The final logo (Figure 1) is extensively used in communication materials (newsletters, correspondence, and presentations). It was printed onto fridge magnets, widely distributed in the community at events, and given to all research participants. In addition, the response of others in the community to the logo was positive.

Figure 1. Research program logo representing lifecourse and intergenerational concepts as perceived through two Métis youth (CL, SC).

In presenting the final logo to the SEG Inc. and team, the youth described each section and its relevance to their perceptions of Métis well-being.

Beginning with the branch wreath, it represents the circle of life. Starting out at birth (that is why the leaves haven’t grown yet) and as maturity builds so do the leaves. At the end comes death but leaves continue as we continue in the afterlife

The branch and leaf metaphor that was chosen by the youth also represents the connection to the land, and the strength and spirituality that Métis people draw from being on the land.

Drawing on the broader Indigenous concept of the Medicine Wheel the circular shape of the wreath encompasses 4 inner circles, each broken into four quadrants, that represent distinct dimensions of health arranged according to the four cardinal directions. Each layer of circles and quadrants is populated with colors and symbols that represent the concepts and teachings the young artists have received from Knowledge Keepers, family members, and educators from their community.

To the north, the white quadrant represents the physical dimension of health with an image of an older person lifting a barbell. The barbell weights are fish and meat on one side and vegetables and fruit on the other. Here physical activity and eating well-including from the land, are seen as supporting individuals to be physically well. One of the four sacred healing plants, sage is also depicted in this quadrant. To the east, the yellow quadrant represents the emotional dimension of health with an image of a Kokom (Grandmother) and Moshom (Grandfather) standing happily together. This image of the older couple represents strength that people draw from one another across generations, and stability that the younger people seek from their Knowledge Keepers and older family members. Sweetgrass is the second sacred plant depicted on this quadrant. At the south is the red quadrant that represents the mental dimension of health. This is associated with an image of an older person’s outstretched hand being grasped by a younger hand. The importance of the connection between generations for mental health is clear. The third sacred plant, tobacco, is depicted here. Finally, to the west the black quadrant represents the spiritual dimension of health. The image here is of a young person meditating and practicing yoga. The fourth sacred plant, cedar, is presented in this quadrant.

In the middle are pictures of plants of the “Indian” medicine. Each one representing one of the four colours of the medicine wheel

Finally, the core, is depicted as the Chinese yin-and-yang symbol of balance. The logo continues below with four eagle feathers suspended from the wreath with string and beads in the colors of the four directions. The Eagle represents strength, power, and a view of the land from the sky. The thread and beads symbolize the knowledge and expertise of the Métis women through their skills as caregivers, storytellers, beaders, moccasin- and mitten-makers, sewers, and knowledge keepers. The feathers are connected by a Métis sash, in the middle of which is the blue Métis flag. Both are powerful symbols of Métis identity (Métis Nation of Ontario, 2021). The overall design of the logo as a dreamcatcher explicitly represents two powerful Indigenous ontological influences on the youth artists whose ancestry and community include Cree (dream catcher) and Métis (sash and flag) relations.

The feathers and string are used to make it look like a dream catcher. The infinity sign and Métis sash represent who we are as Métis

Other health ontologies to which the youth artists have been exposed in our globalized world also clearly resonate and have found a place in the logo. There is a great deal to unpack in this community-youth generated reflection of well-being. As we summarize in the next section, the logo is strongly aligned with Indigenous academic discourse on the centrality of intergenerational relations in collective and individual well-being with important contributions to advancing the intergenerational field of scholarship.

Relevance of the Métis aging well research project logo

Indigenous worldview is underpinned by connections between people, family, community, and ancestral land (Anderson, 2011; Beatty, Canada & Social Isolation and Social Innovation, 2018; Blackstock, 2007). Living a healthy life, a good life (pimatsiwin), is achieved when essential ancestral knowledge is passed down from Knowledge Keepers (Beatty, Canada & Social Isolation and Social Innovation, 2018; Blackstock, 2007, 2009) to younger generations. First Nations scholar, Cindy Blackstock, has advanced these ideas ontologically and epistemologically through Breath of Life Theory (BOL) and an accompanying Ecological Framework (Blackstock, 2009). First developed in response to structural risks related to First Nations child welfare, BOL is grounded in the view that peoples are trustees of essential knowledge, and the values and spirits embedded within, on what it is to be human and to belong to a group. This knowledge is passed on by those who came before and the role of those currently alive is to ensure that the generations that follow can understand the teaching of this essential knowledge. This relational approach is premised on the view that knowledge only reaches maturity at the end of life, when it is time to fulfill the two most important functions of a lifetime: (1) passing land and life knowledge to children; and (2) mentoring the middle aged as they transition to the next generation of Knowledge Keepers (Blackstock, 2009; 2019). The Ecological Framework articulates well-being as a balance of intersecting cognitive, spiritual, emotional, and physical dimensions achieved through the application of ancestral knowledge and the passing on of that knowledge (Blackstock, 2009). Blackstock explains that culture and context shape the manifestation of these dimensions in human experience, rendering BOL and the ecological framework applicable beyond the circumstance in which it was developed. Blackstock’s work was selected to guide our program of research but were not known to the youth who designed our program logo. Thus, the synergies we later observed between the logo and Blackstock’s work were all the more striking to us.

The logo reaffirms the importance of intergenerational interactions to support health and wellness across the lifespan, and explicitly depicts intergenerational interactions and knowledge passed between older and younger adults. In parallel to the BOL theory, the logo highlights that as older adults engage with younger generations in meaningful and relevant ways, they have opportunities to pass essential knowledge to the younger generation. Reciprocally, through this sharing of knowledge, older adults also enhance their own sense of health and wellness. Furthermore, BOL and the logo emphasize the significance of the land and its resources to domains of health and wellness across lifespan and generations.

It became clear, as we observed the iterative process of Métis youth creating a Métis health and wellness research program logo in consultation with Métis research program leads and the SEG, Inc., that this was a creative and engaging way for youth to express their cultural knowledge and teachings. It created opportunities for Métis older adults to respond to the youth’s framing of health and wellness and demonstrated the role of artistic process and expression as an educational and health promoting intervention (de Leeuw & Greenwood, 2012; Muirhead & de Leeuw, 2012; Stuckey & Nobel, 2010). As youth expressed their perspectives through art, the logo provided insight for older adults and other generations to engage with the diverse perspectives of a younger generation that are also informed by other world views which they see as resonant with their traditional Métis teachings (example: the inclusion yin/yang from Chinese philosophies of wholeness and balance (Tsuei, 1978)). In this way the artistic representation of wellness in the youth-developed logo opened intergenerational conversations related to Métis health and wellness, underscoring the dynamic nature of culture and, in this case, the complexities of cultural recovery in the context of decolonization.

Indigenous people navigate multiple worlds in their day to day lives, experiencing resonances and much dissonance. Some of these resonances are evident in the logo. These worlds are not, however, balanced in research or practice and Indigenous peoples are commonly forced to subsume or integrate their ontologies and epistemologies into western paradigms of health, research, policy, and intervention (4). As Blackstock has exhorted, it is important to interrogate the value underpinnings of the paradigms that support health interventions to truly align them with their recipients (4, 5). The logo reveals intergenerational connection as a core value of the Métis peoples with whom we are partnered. Given the alignment with Indigenous scholarship in the area, as well as the growing global field of intergenerational research, it would seem this value resonates broadly, and that the youth perspectives we have shared here have much to contribute as well.

Acknowledgments

We want to acknowledge 2 Métis youth (from the community of Île-à-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan, Canada) for designing the logo. The symbols drawn in the logo come directly from the Métis youth’s own insight and experiences of growing up in a northern, rural Métis community.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) under grant #136971; and Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF) under grant #3463.