This article primarily focuses on the stories shared by Indigenous women with living and/or lived experiences of HIV/hepatitis C virus from the Vancouver Downtown East Side who attended the "Awakening our Wisdom" retreat. Weaving together the story of an Indigenous approach to research that informed the design of the retreat and the findings that emerged, a basket is formed that highlights the ways settler-colonialism within Canada has produced a system of health care that has neglected the Indigenous experience. The emerging themes of Connection, Disconnection, and Reconnection offers teachings for Indigenous journeys of resilience and wellness for those living with HIV/hepatitis C virus. These findings may help health care practitioners identify health care places and spaces that are in need of decolonization and offer, from an Indigenous perspective, the next steps forward for a health care system that promotes Indigenous engagement and retention in care.
Global South and Indigenous communities often represent the contexts of international service learning (ISL) programs. However, rarely are the effects of historical colonization and the potential colonizing impact of Global North visitors being investigated. Central to this article is our story as Global North and settler-Canadian researchers who are learning to experiment with decolonization as a theoretical framework for ISL research. We offer an account of the development of an encuentro (symposium); a culminating event for a four-year study, in which Guatemalan and Nicaraguan host community members share of their experiences as Indigenous hosts. The findings reveal challenges in future ISL research in such contexts and offer ideas about how institutions and organizations may develop ISL in ways that honor community visions of reciprocity.
Faith-based relief and development organization Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) has been involved in the country of Guatemala since 1976 when they responded to relief needs in light of the devastating earthquake at the time. Since then MCC has invested in a number of communities throughout Guatemala in various capacities, one of which has been the development of service and learning opportunities aimed at exposing and connecting students/participants in the global north with the people and issues within the global south. As researchers of service learning, who are also committed to a faith tradition and have participated in or have been in relationship with MCC in some capacity, we are interested in evaluating how their faith tradition has helped to both construct their practice as well as critique it. One of the aims of our research is to collaborate with MCC practitioners in assessing and examining their current practice of service/learning in Guatemala in an effort to discover ways in which they are creating opportunities for positive societal change -both in the lives of the student/ participants and the communities in Guatemala, while critiquing the traditional colonial and neocolonial approaches to development.
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