Collapsing the Distance: Indigenous Youth Engagement in a Circumpolar Study of Youth Resilience

The Circumpolar Indigenous Pathways to Adulthood (CIPA) study brought together researchers from five different universities, working in five different regions of the Arctic, to explore Arctic indigenous youth resilience utilizing collaborative and participatory approaches. This paper focuses on outcomes from the collaboration of two sites in the project and presents findings from a culminating cross-site workshop that engaged indigenous youth and community members, along with university researchers of various disciplines and backgrounds, in a cultural exchange of knowledge and practice. While our main goal for the study was to reveal processes and factors underlying indigenous youth resilience, we learned much about the processes and factors contributing to resilience in research collaborations as well. Our findings suggest indigenous research methodologies may contribute towards the development of resilient collaborations with potential to bring about transformative outcomes for indigenous community members engaged in research.