Indigenous Peoples place a high value on caring for sick, disabled and elderly community members.<\/p>\n
Yet, the unique perspectives and experiences of Indigenous employees are often overlooked or excluded as they struggle to juggle work and caregiving activities.<\/p>\n
These are among the observations of a joint research project being conducted by Brock University and the Fort Erie Native Friendship Centre.<\/p>\n
Launched last year<\/a>, the project examines the experiences of people in Niagara\u2019s First Nations community who provide care to elderly or disabled adults while being employed full time.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot to learn about how Indigenous Peoples perceive and conceptualize care and eldercare in a workplace that is led by Indigenous values,\u201d says Eva Jewell, an Anishinaabe Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Brock University who is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Ryerson University.<\/p>\n Jewell is co-leading the research along with Andrea Doucet, Canada Research Chair in Gender Work and Care and Professor of Sociology and Women\u2019s and Gender Studies at Brock University.<\/p>\n Karen Hilston, Life Long Care Co-ordinator with the Fort Erie Native Friendship Centre (FENFC), says care work is especially valued and held in high esteem in Indigenous organizations. In her Centre, leaders take a case-by-case approach to supporting staff who are caregivers.<\/p>\n \u201cWorking for an Indigenous organization, we know that self-care is one of the most important aspects of being a front-line worker,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Last year, Brock and the FENFC held two focus group consultations with urban First Nations members and Centre support workers in which they discussed their experiences balancing caregiving duties and paid employment.<\/p>\n The discussions \u201cwere in the style of a sharing circle rather than formal, researcher top-down questions,\u201d says master\u2019s student Jessica Falk, who is on the research team.<\/p>\n Several themes emerged from the sharing circles.<\/p>\n First Nations and other Indigenous Peoples are from \u201crelationship-based societies\u201d oriented to kinship ties and care for elders, says Jewell.<\/p>\n These ties exist beyond immediate relatives, says Hilston. \u201cYou will see people take on responsibilities for other people who are not necessarily blood family but it\u2019s a key community value.\u201d<\/p>\n Putting the sick and elderly in institutions such as long-term care facilities is not an option for most caregivers, says Hilston.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you have elders who have come from a residential school, the last place you\u2019d want to put them is in a nursing home,\u201d she says. \u201cYou have to be aware of the past, you have to know and understand intergenerational trauma that has happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Also emerging from the sharing circles were \u201cunique social determinants of health that are different than other people living in Canada,\u201d says Falk.<\/p>\n For example, Indigenous Peoples in Canada are three to five times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes, she says. Differences in health stem from the legacies of residential schools and colonialism, systemic racism and household demographics such as income level.<\/p>\n These and other unique perspectives and experiences need to be incorporated into workplace policies so as to best support Indigenous employees as they care for loved ones, say the researchers.<\/p>\n Doucet says the research team is currently writing up what they learned from the sharing circles of urban First Nations caregivers.<\/p>\n The next step is for the team to make recommendations on how Indigenous perspectives can be added to the Canadian Caregiver Inclusive and Accommodating Workplace (CIAW) Standard<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to enhance the Standard to include these culturally sensitive and culturally adaptable perspectives, to ensure the needs of Indigenous care employees in the Niagara region are met,\u201d says Doucet.<\/p>\n The CIAW Standard outlines gender-sensitive, caregiver-friendly practices that guide employers, human resource professionals and others to support employee-caregivers in a wide variety of workplaces.<\/p>\n The Brock University and Fort Erie Native Friendship Centre research project<\/a> is part of a larger initiative<\/a> \u2013 headquartered at McMaster University and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research \u2013 to scale up the Standard.<\/p>\n This is the second collaboration between the partners. In 2018, the FENFC-Brock team conducted research into barriers that Indigenous residents face in gaining employment, as well as supports that can help people obtain and remain in jobs.\u00a0 Their research included conducting focus groups\/sharing circles (two with youth and two with adults) as well as interviewing area employers.<\/p>\n