Strengthening Âhkamêyimo among Indigenous youth: The social determinants of health, justice, and resilience in Canada’s north

The wellbeing of Indigenous youth living in Canada’s northern communities continues to lag behind the rest of the Canadian population. To a large extent, these health inequities are perpetuated by processes of colonisation that significantly impact the social determinants of health in Canada’s Indigenous north. The purpose of this article is to review the history of colonisation and its impacts on the wellbeing of Indigenous youth in Canada’s north, as well as processes of resilience that have helped Indigenous youth live healthy lives despite social challenges. Academic articles published between 2000 and 2016 outlining resilience from Indigenous perspectives are reviewed in the contexts of Canada’s Indigenous north. Analysis focuses on what insights about resilience emerge from Indigenous communities, particularly as they related to the health inequities of circumpolar regions. The concept of Âhkamêyimo is discussed and how systems of Indigenous knowledge offer important insights into resilience in general, and can be utilised in health promotion, education, and prevention programs targeting Indigenous youth in northern Canada. We conclude that attention should be turned toward issues of social justice and health equity that are desperately needed in order to create healthy environments whereby Indigenous youth within northern Canadian communities can be assisted to flourish

The Interpersonal Skills of Community-Engaged Scholarship: Insights From Collaborators Working at the University of Saskatchewan’s Community Engagement Office

Perhaps more clearly than other research approaches, community-based research or engaged scholarship involves both technical skills of research expertise and scientific rigor as well as interpersonal skills of relationship building, effective communication, and moral ways of being. In an academic age concerned with scientific precision, cognitive skills, quantification, and reliable measurements, the interpersonal skills required for research—and particularly community-based research and engaged scholarship—demand growing importance and resources in contemporary discourse and practice. Focused around the University of Saskatchewan’s Community Engagement Office located in the inner city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the authors draw on over 50 years of collective experience to offer critical reflections on the notion of interpersonal skills in community-engaged scholarship that manifest particularly in place-based contexts of Indigenous community partnerships. Overall, we argue that discourse and practice involving community-engaged scholarship must pay attention to the notion of interpersonal skills in various aspects and across multiple dimensions and disciplines. This approach is crucial to ensure that research is done effectively and ethically, that good quality data are produced from such research, that subtle, systematic forms of micro-aggression and oppression are minimized, and that community voices and knowledge have a meaningful and significant place in scholarship activities

Pleistocene footprints show intensive use of lake margin habitats by Homo erectus groups

Reconstructing hominin paleoecology is critical for understanding our ancestors’ diets, social organizations and interactions with other animals. Most paleoecological models lack fine-scale resolution due to fossil hominin scarcity and the time-averaged accumulation of faunal assemblages. Here we present data from 481 fossil tracks from northwestern Kenya, including 97 hominin footprints attributed to Homo erectus. These tracks are found in multiple sedimentary layers spanning approximately 20 thousand years. Taphonomic experiments show that each of these trackways represents minutes to no more than a few days in the lives of the individuals moving across these paleolandscapes. The geology and associated vertebrate fauna place these tracks in a deltaic setting, near a lakeshore bordered by open grasslands. Hominin footprints are disproportionately abundant in this lake margin environment, relative to hominin skeletal fossil frequency in the same deposits. Accounting for preservation bias, this abundance of hominin footprints indicates repeated use of lakeshore habitats by Homo erectus. Clusters of very large prints moving in the same direction further suggest these hominins traversed this lakeshore in multi-male groups. Such reliance on near water environments, and possibly aquatic-linked foods, may have influenced hominin foraging behavior and migratory routes across and out of Africa

A portal of educational resources: providing evidence for matching pedagogy with technology

The TPACK (Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge) model presents the three types of knowledge that are necessary to implement a successful technology-based educational activity. It highlights how the intersections between TPK (Technological Pedagogical Knowledge), PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge) and TCK (Technological Content Knowledge) are not a sheer sum up of their components but new types of knowledge. This paper focuses on TPK, the intersection between technology knowledge and pedagogy knowledge – a crucial field of investigation. Actually, technology in education is not just an add-on but is literally reshaping teaching/learning paradigms. Technology modifies pedagogy and pedagogy dictates requirements to technology. In order to pursue this research, an empirical approach was taken, building a repository (back-end) and a portal (front-end) of about 300 real-life educational experiences run at school. Educational portals are not new, but they generally emphasise content. Instead, in our portal, technology and pedagogy take centre stage. Experiences are classified according to more than 30 categories (‘facets’) and more than 200 facet values, all revolving around the pedagogical implementation and the technology used. The portal (an innovative piece of technology) supports sophisticated ‘exploratory’ sessions of use, targeted at researchers (investigating the TPK intersection), teachers (looking for inspiration in their daily jobs) and decision makers (making decisions about the introduction of technology into schools)

The FLUXNET2015 dataset and the ONEFlux processing pipeline for eddy covariance data

The FLUXNET2015 dataset provides ecosystem-scale data on CO2, water, and energy exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and other meteorological and biological measurements, from 212 sites around the globe (over 1500 site-years, up to and including year 2014). These sites, independently managed and operated, voluntarily contributed their data to create global datasets. Data were quality controlled and processed using uniform methods, to improve consistency and intercomparability across sites. The dataset is already being used in a number of applications, including ecophysiology studies, remote sensing studies, and development of ecosystem and Earth system models. FLUXNET2015 includes derived-data products, such as gap-filled time series, ecosystem respiration and photosynthetic uptake estimates, estimation of uncertainties, and metadata about the measurements, presented for the first time in this paper. In addition, 206 of these sites are for the first time distributed under a Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0) license. This paper details this enhanced dataset and the processing methods, now made available as open-source codes, making the dataset more accessible, transparent, and reproducible.Peer reviewe

Integrative review protocol for Indigenous youth participation in health equity promotion

Introduction Indigenous youth participation in decision-making is internationally recognised as a pathway to promote health equity, decolonisation and social inclusion. Hearing Indigenous youth voices and actively involving them in decisions that affect their lives and their communities has the potential to address disproportionate health and social challenges they encounter. Yet the existing evidence-base on participatory approaches remains fragmented and vast leading to a lack of integration.Methods and analysis An integrative review methodology will be used to conduct a comprehensive, multidisciplinary review of the literature about Indigenous youth participation in health equity promotion. The literature search is anticipated to be carried out in July–August 2022. We will search online databases Scopus, Ovid MEDLINE, Embase and PsycINFO along with several interdisciplinary databases indexed in EBSCOhost and ProQuest. Key Indigenous research journals not consistently indexed in the online databases will be examined to identify additional journal articles. We will employ a blinded, dual-reviewer two-step selection process with established inclusion/exclusion criteria and limit data to English-language publications related to Indigenous populations in Canada, USA, Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. Focusing on qualitative empirical and theoretical studies, they will undergo quality appraisal and Covidence software will be used to manage the review. Data will be sorted, extracted and analysed. We will codify data for descriptive reporting and conduct a narrative synthesis to identify a common conceptualisation for Indigenous youth participatory approaches across disciplines, its barriers and facilitators, and knowledge gaps.Ethics and dissemination Ethical review is not required for the integrative review. The review will be shared through various publication and non-academic platforms as well as our university and community research networks. Findings will have broad relevance for those seeking to involve Indigenous youth to be active decision-makers across a range of fields, but with specific implications for health equity