Tara Lise Erb

The British Columbia Network Environment for Indigenous Health Research (BC NEIHR) supports research capacity, engagement, and leadership of Indigenous communities, collectives, and organizations (ICCOs) in Indigenous-led health research. To support Indigenous self-determination in the health research landscape, the BC NEIHR centers Indigenous approaches in research policy and practice. The BC NEIHR uses the term capacity-bridging, opposed to capacity-building, to acknowledge and support existing ICCO research capacities, distinct cultural knowledges, and community-led perspectives. The BC NEIHR enacts its commitment to ICCO self-determined health research through capacity-bridging initiatives including the Indigenous Research Liaison (IRL) program. We share how the IRL program created meaningful change through ICCO relationship-building, knowledge sharing and resource development, health research partnerships, and institutional systems-level change. The IRL program represents a case study of how an organizational-level strategic intervention can help shape and inform the transformation of research environments to better support Indigenous self-determination in Indigenous-led health research.

The British Columbia Network Environment for Indigenous Health Research (BC NEIHR) supports self-determination of Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous communities, collectives, and organizations (ICCOs) in health research. Through partnerships with ICCOs, Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, and external Indigenous and non-Indigenous partner organizations across BC, the BC NEIHR works closely with research administrators to advance self-determination of Indigenous Peoples and ICCOs in health research. To transform the current research environment and uphold Indigenous self-determination, research institutions and administration must build and strengthen culturally safe and meaningful partnerships with Indigenous Peoples and ICCOs. Through the Indigenous Cultural Safety in Research Framework, the BC NEIHR challenges dominant Western colonial environments of research to advance decolonization of all research systems, including research administration. We share considerations for Indigenous cultural safety in research administration, including recommendations that address power imbalances, bridge capacity, and build culturally safe and meaningful relationships within Indigenous health research.

The British Columbia Network Environment for Indigenous Health Research (BC NEIHR) is one of nine Canada-wide initiatives focused on research leadership across First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities. When developing the BC NEIHR Environmental Evaluation Framework (EEF) the authors strove to empower Indigenous people to engage in evaluation that mirrors their cultural principles. With the aim of advancing their own evaluation, and contribute to Indigenous evaluation knowledge, the authors conducted a critical content analysis of the EEF and annual reports supported by an Indigenous evaluation literature scan. This article presents the results of that meta-analysis, in which four improvement themes where found: addressing power dynamics, using methods based on Indigenous epistemologies, redefining success metrics and indicators, and the idea of becoming rather than having done. The meta-analysis concludes that the key to Indigenous evaluation lies in relational systems thinking, self-determination, reciprocity, and mutual benefit. In this work, the authors hope to contribute to the future directions of Indigenous evaluation frameworks. This article is a contribution to the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation Roots and Relations Collection’s Western Door – Do Good Work, with the aim of supporting and advancing culturally grounded, reciprocal, and relational Indigenous evaluation principles and processes.

Purpose: The British Columbia Network Environment for Indigenous Health Research (BC NEIHR) aims to support and advance research leadership among Indigenous communities, collectives and organizations (ICCOs) within British Columbia, Canada. The BC NEIHR provides support and funding to ICCOs for research development and knowledge sharing. This funding model supports ICCOs' self-determined health research by providing funds that are fully controlled by ICCOs, without the requirement of a non-Indigenous host organization.Design/methodology/approach: We conducted a critical analysis of 35 ICCO research development and knowledge-sharing grant applications to identify how ICCOs are decolonizing research and methodologies.Findings: Six themes were identified from ICCO decolonizing methodologies: (1) identified, driven, and led by Indigenous Peoples and community; (2) guidance from advisors, ethical guidelines, and local protocols; (3) follow traditional and cultural practices; (4) determine what is knowledge and ways to share knowledge; (5) celebrating the sharing and returning of knowledge and (6) advancing relationality: building and strengthening relationships.Originality/value: This paper highlights the impact of how the BC NEIHR and ICCOs are advancing decolonizing methodologies to support self-determined Indigenous health research led by, and grounded in, Indigenous communities. It reflects on the work of Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples and contributes to the literature of decolonizing methodologies.

In Canada, the health research funding landscape limits the self-determination of Indigenous peoples in multiple ways, including institutional eligibility, priority setting, and institutional structures that deprioritize Indigenous knowledges. However, Indigenous-led research networks represent a promising approach to transforming the funding landscape to better support the self-determination of Indigenous peoples in health research. The British Columbia Network Environment for Indigenous Health Research (BC NEIHR) is one of nine Indigenous-led networks across Canada that supports research leadership among Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) communities, collectives, and organizations (ICCOs). In this paper, we share three best practices to support the self-determination of ICCOs in health research based on three years of operating the BC NEIHR: (1) creating capacity-bridging initiatives to overcome funding barriers; (2) building relational research relationships with ICCOs (“people on the ground”); and (3) establishing a network of partnerships and collaborations to support ICCO self-determination. Supporting the self-determination of ICCOs and enabling them to lead their own health research is a critical pathway toward transforming the way Indigenous health research is funded and conducted in Canada.

This research represents an in-depth exploration of the lived experience, demands and risks of facilitating Indigenous cultural safety and the impact it has on the health and wellness of Indigenous cultural safety facilitators. Using Indigenous and qualitative methodologies, this study gathered data from 11 Indigenous cultural safety facilitators in the Vancouver Island and Vancouver regions through in-depth interviews. Issues around training, preparation, boundaries and capacity within Indigenous cultural safety spaces were examined, as well as the resistance, harm, violence, emotional taxation, hardships and burnout often experienced by Indigenous cultural safety facilitators. With a focus on how facilitating Indigenous cultural safety affects physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellness, as well as emphasizing the high risk of burnout, this research demonstrates that Indigenous cultural safety environments can be unsafe for Indigenous cultural safety facilitators and exposes a need to explore further how social and structural supports can better protect the health and wellness of Indigenous cultural safety facilitators.