Urban Indigenous youth identify connections with nature as a source of resilience and health

Photovoice is a participatory action research approach in which participants take and share photographs of phenomena reflecting their lived experience. Traditionally, photovoice centers the human voice. This study used photovoice to examine human-nature relations associated with resilience and health among urban Indigenous youth in a process that balanced both human and other-than-human voices.

Twenty-eight Indigenous youth in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada) served as co-researchers for this study which was based on a “Two-Eyed Seeing” approach. This approach considers the world through both an Indigenous lens and a Western lens. This study extended “Two-Eyed Seeing” to include both human and other-than-human “voices” enacted during the co-creation of knowledge. As co-researchers, the Indigenous youth played an active role in choosing how and what data were collected, what parts of stories were shared, and ways the stories were utilized. The stories described what the youth did to produce their images and what they saw and heard in their images. The research process occurred over the course of one year and included four rounds of photography reflecting the seasons (fall, winter, spring, summer). For each round, participating youth used photography and group discussions to share their perspectives of “what”, “how”, and “why” resources of resilience and health were important to them.

Nature, or the natural world, “appeared vividly” in the images and stories shared by the youth. In many images, nature functioned as a metaphor for youth resilience and as a source of health and wellbeing. Nature was depicted as “supporting nutrition and sustenance, enhancing emotional regulation, reducing psychological distress, and enhancing self-esteem and self-efficacy.” Nature also functioned as a spiritual source of knowledge and wisdom and as a mediator for holding human relationships together. Many of the participating youth noted how the images, themselves, failed to “represent reality with complete truth or precision.” They described how image-making became an emergent process, resulting in the co-production of knowledge obtained when the participant’s and the other-than-human “voices” were combined.

This research demonstrates the usefulness of photovoice in capturing a multiplicity of “voices,” including humans and nature. The findings also indicate that connecting with self and other kinds of life can promote resilience and contribute to the emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being of urban Indigenous youth across seasons.