“For the Next Seven Generations”: An Exploration of “Urban Indigenous Women’s Leadership Framework” through the Experiences of Indigenous Women Engaging in a Community-based Leadership Program
SFU Indigenous Digital Media Grant
“For the next seven generations”: (re-)Creating an Indigenous women’s urban leadership framework.
December 2020 SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant (PEG)
Our partner organization, Skookum Lab (now Skookum Surrey), is a community-based social innovation lab in Surrey. Their aim is to address the high rate of Indigenous child and youth poverty by uniting people who experience poverty, making their lived experience visible, and honouring the wisdom of the urban Indigenous community. Specific to this project is Skookum Lab’s Ambassador program which aims to provide life-affirming opportunities for Indigenous women to develop their voice and become advocates for change. In response to systemic challenges facing Indigenous women and a research need identified by Skookum Lab, this research project aimed to understand how to develop and sustain Indigenous women’s leadership in an urban context by bringing together academic researchers and community practitioners to:
- Understand how the program empowers participants’ ongoing practice of Indigenous leadership in their lives, and in relation to others;
- Synthesize participants’ insights regarding what is needed to continue developing and sustaining Indigenous women’s leadership in urban contexts;
- Re-create an Indigenous Urban Leadership Framework based on the perspective of the I.WILL participants.
Our notion of recreating recognizes that Indigenous peoples have always had leadership theories and culturally informed frameworks that guide us to be good human beings. This is a unique opportunity to both explore and support urban Indigenous women’s leadership through a university community partnership. By learning from and with Ambassador participants, the resulting Indigenous Urban Leadership framework will help to advance Indigenous leadership development within Surrey to the benefit of many organizations and Indigenous communities. This project will build the knowledge base of how to sustain grassroots Indigenous leadership programs and further advance understandings of Indigenous urban leadership in both theory and practice.
Ambassador 2021, Co-researcher
