“Because we have really unique art”: Decolonizing Research with Indigenous Youth Using the Arts

Indigenous communities in Canada share a common history of colonial oppression. As a result, many Indigenous populations are disproportionately burdened with poor health outcomes, including HIV. Conventional public health approaches have not yet been successful in reversing this trend. For this study, a team of community- and university-based researchers came together to imagine new possibilities for health promotion with Indigenous youth. A strengths-based approach was taken that relied on using the energies and talents of Indigenous youth as a leadership resource. Art-making workshops were held in six different Indigenous communities across Canada in which youth could explore the links between community, culture, colonization, and HIV. Twenty artists and more than 85 youth participated in the workshops. Afterwards, youth participants reflected on their experiences in individual in-depth interviews. Youth participants viewed the process of making art as fun, participatory, and empowering; they felt that their art pieces instilled pride, conveyed information, raised awareness, and constituted a tangible achievement. Youth participants found that both the process and products of arts-based methods were important. Findings from this project support the notion that arts-based approaches to the development of HIV-prevention knowledge and Indigenous youth leadership are helping to involve a diverse cross-section of youth in a critical dialogue about health. Arts-based approaches represent one way to assist with decolonization for future generations

Access, Inclusion, Climate, Empowerment (AICE): A Framework for Gender Equity in Market-Driven Education

We present a framework for conceptualizing gender equity, designed around four equity components: Access, Inclusion, Climate, and Empowerment (AICE). Our examination of these components in the current market schooling climate, with particular reference to the situation in Ontario, identifies some significant equity costs of market-driven education, including invisibility of systemic discrimination, co-option of gender equity initiatives to serve market objectives, failure to consider diversity and relations of power in educational practices, increased risks of sexual harassment, and increased barriers to social change. AICE equips educators with an analytical tool to conceptualize gender equity in a market-driven schooling climate. Les auteures proposent de conceptualiser le traitement équitable des sexes à l’aide d’un schéma formé de quatre éléments : accès, inclusion, climat et habilitation. L’analyse de ces éléments dans le contexte scolaire actuel, en particulier en Ontario, dévoile d’importants coûts inhérents à l’enseignement axé sur le marché, dont l’invisibililité de la discrimination systémique, l’assimilation aux objectifs du marché des initiatives en matière d’équité entre les sexes, l’occultation de la diversité et des relations de pouvoir dans les pratiques pédagogiques, les risques accrus de harcèlement sexuel et la multiplication des obstacles au changement social. Le schéma donne aux enseignants un outil analytique leur permettant de conceptualiser le traitement équitable des sexes dans un contexte éducatif axé sur le marché.

'Culture' as HIV prevention: Indigenous youth speak up!

This article explores the ways in which (a) Indigenous youth involved in an HIV intervention took up and reclaimed their cultures as a project of defining ‘self’, and (b) how Indigenous ‘culture’ can be used as a tool for resistance, HIV prevention and health promotion. Data were drawn from the Taking Action Project: Using arts-based approaches to develop Aboriginal youth leadership in HIV prevention. ‘By youth, for youth’ HIV education and awareness workshops were facilitated in six Indigenous communities across Canada, incorporating traditional and contemporary art forms to explore how youth perceived the links between structural inequality and HIV vulnerability. Over 100 youth participated, with 70 partaking in individual interviews to reflect on their experiences at the workshops. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using NVivo software. Indigenous youth understood culture as a complex construct that included reconnecting to land, body, history, community and ceremony. For many youth, being Aboriginal and participating in cultural activities was seen as important for intergenerational healing, empowerment, health and combatting HIV. Youth spoke excitedly of their attempts to reclaim their languages and cultures despite barriers. They also understood art as a medium for self-expression and as an important site of cultural evolution.Our project demonstrates that the incorporation of culture within health strategies is important for effective HIV prevention amongst Indigenous youth. Reclaiming Indigenous cultures, languages and ceremonies may help to nurture future generations, diminish cycles of victimisation and combat hopelessness by reconnecting youth to stories of resistance and survival.Keywords: Indigenous youth, culture, HIV prevention, arts-based researc

The Ontario Sexual Health Education Update: Perspectives from the Toronto Teen Survey (TTS) Youth

Sexual health education in schools is a controversial topic. In 2015 an updated version of the sex education program was introduced to schools in the Province of Ontario, Canada. The curriculum received strong criticism from some parents and lobby groups. Similar objections led to the Ontario Liberal government withdrawing the previous sex education program update in 2010. Public debates about the appropriateness of the new curriculum are primarily concerned with the extent to which parents were consulted. Absent from these discussions are the opinions of the curriculum’s target group: students. What do young people have to say about their sexual health education, and how can this information be used to provide more effective programs in schools? In this article we draw on the findings of the Toronto Teen Survey (TTS) (N = 1,216) to discuss youth responses to questions about their experience with sexual health education and the relevance of this information for school-based sexual health education (SBSE). Considering that TTS youth identified schools as their primary source of sexual health education, the survey findings have value for SBSE. In discussing the TTS data in the context of the updated Ontario sexual health curriculum, we provide a youth perspective on the revised sexual health education program that was implemented in the fall of 2015