A descriptive overview of healthy relationship programs for Indigenous youth in Canada: an integrated environmental scan

The legacy of structural and colonial violence has disrupted attachment which has led to the breakdown of healthy relationships within some Indigenous families and communities. A key component of re-establishing attachment is through addressing the effect of historical and on-going colonalism (e.g., intergenerational trauma, cultural connectedness) on individual, family, and community relationships.

We conducted a descriptive environmental scan of web-based resources and complemented it with community reports from conversations with key Indigenous stakeholders, to identify and describe what programs are available to Indigenous youth within community settings that focus on fostering healthy relations. Qualitative descriptive summaries were used to synthesize information, summary statistics and frequencies described commonalities across programs, and pattern analysis identified patterns within the data based on demographic factors. In total, forty-seven programs were found across thirty-four organizations.

Programs integrated cultivating healthy relationships by focusing on skill training (55%), Indigenous cultural education and activities (42%), and mentorship (25%). Programs described the relationships they focused on in broad terms such as healthy relationships, intergenerational relations, and relationships with the land. Programs differed based on gender and age; programs designed for girls focused on self-empowerment and those for boys on violence prevention training. Programs for younger youth aimed to foster positive identity, those for teenagers on relationship building, and those for older youth on promoting mental health.

These findings highlight distinct features of healthy relationship programming for Indigenous youth in Canada and offers promising avenues in the future development of such programming based on age and gender. These findings may be of interest to healthcare service research or decision-makers looking to develop healthy relationship programs in Indigenous contexts to develop culturally-relevant and trauma-informed programming to address the effects of historical and on-going colonalism.