Two workshops were held with urban Indigenous youth who live in foster care on Lekwungen Territory on southern Vancouver Island. The workshops were informed by guidance from community knowledge holders and Elders and explored the meaning of Indigenous coming of age and adolescence with 15 youth through oral, visual, and text-based activities. Following a thematic analysis of the workshop transcripts, five themes emerged: self-continuity; self-awareness; empowerment; being part of something bigger; and support networks. These themes provide evidence that engaging with coming of age teachings and activities are protective to youth wellness and help youth to build strong foundations from which they can learn about their Indigenous ancestry and history in their own time. (Re)connecting to coming of age teachings is part of a broader discourse of (re)writing narratives that celebrate the strength, leadership, and independence of the urban Indigenous youth community. Although the voices shared reflect young community members living in and around southern Vancouver Island, the essence of our key messages are relevant to the broader Indigenous community and those practicing allyship through education, health care, social work, and other areas of influence.
Criminal laws in Canada and many other countries are currently premised on the assumption of homogeneity, that is, people in sex work are cis women and girls who are being sexually exploited/sex trafficked. This perspective is also shared by antiprostitution groups and many researchers investigating the “prostitution problem”. Perpetuating this position obscures their demographic multiplicity and variety of lived experiences. We interviewed 10 leaders from seven sex worker organizations (SWOs) across Canada who reported a diversity among their clientele that is rarely captured in the extant literature and absent from the current Canadian criminal code. Our findings reveal the important role that SWOs have to play in facilitating access to health and social services and providing spaces where people in sex work can gather in safe and supportive environments, without the fear of stigma, discrimination, or police harassment. We conclude that SWOs can operate as a structural intervention beyond decriminalization that can improve equitable access to health and social services for sex workers Despite SWOs’ efforts, sex workers’ mobilization is still limited by micro-, meso-, and macrolevel stigmatization that prevents and/or discourages some workers from accessing their programs and services.
This paper presents the first phase of a community engagement project that explores (re)connecting to coming-of-age teachings grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing and doing for urban Indigenous youth in foster or away-from-home care. An intergenerational group of urban Indigenous Knowledge Holders in and around Victoria, British Columbia, Canada came together to discuss what a culturally appropriate coming of age could look like for urban Indigenous youth in care and how delegated Indigenous child and family service organizations could be involved. Four questions were discussed, and the conversations were recorded and subsequently themed. The event reflected the community’s commitment to supporting youth in their coming-of-age journey. Delegated organizations, in addition to acting as legal guardians for the youth, are cultural resources for the community and help connect youth to culture in their ancestral/home and urban communities. Communities work to ensure that youth have access to safe spaces where they can self-determine their identities as they enter adulthood. (Re)connecting to coming-of-age teachings is important because the imposition of Euro-Western child welfare legislation prevented the passing of cultural teachings. Our findings are consistent with literature that indicates culturally grounded, positive-action initiatives, like traditional coming-of-age rites of passage, help youth to cultivate resilience that can support the transition to adulthood. This aligns with evidence that demonstrates intergenerational cultural continuity is protective to health and wellness for Indigenous youth.
Arts-based methodologies are increasingly being used in community-based research to explore and communicate issues of importance to Indigenous communities. Situating research in an Indigenist framework ensures that relational accountability—foundational to Indigenous ways of knowing and doing—is threaded throughout all stages of a research project. In this article, the authors describe how using Indigenist arts-based methodologies helped to develop critical knowledge sharing tools about urban Indigenous coming of age for youth living in foster care. The article describes how wisdoms gathered at a knowledge holder’s dinner and two youth workshops were used to develop the story Becoming Wolf, which was later adapted to a watercolour infographic and a graphic novel. We hope that this article shows our support for socially transformative and allied research and contributes to discourses about knowledge co-creation and mobilization.
Researchers have argued that the current punitive approaches to regulating sex work expose underlying structures that seek to preserve a social order embedded with stigmas related to the race, gender, sexuality, class, and migration status of sex sellers (Benoit et al [...]
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