Since 2022, Mental Health Research Canada (MHRC) has offered the Mitacs Annual Indigenous Mental Health Studentship to support Indigenous students conducting community-grounded mental health research. MHRC is a national independent charity that has been supporting Indigenous mental health research, including studentships, since its founding in 2019. This studentship provides $15,000 to eligible First Nations, Inuit, and Métis students who are doing community-grounded research in Indigenous Mental Health.
Barani Ganapathi, senior consultant of research grants and impact at MHRC, explains the program was created to “support early-career Indigenous researchers in advancing mental health research that is grounded in community priorities, Indigenous knowledge, lived experience, and relationships.”
The studentship also supports MHRC’s broader mission to “strengthen the connections between researchers, communities and academic institutions while supporting work that can have value beyond a single project.”
Jersee Hill, a master’s student at York, is participating in the program. Her research focuses on improving Connections, “an interpersonal violence prevention program for women with young children” developed by Breaking the Cycle (BTC). Hill chose this research because of her “passion and commitment to supporting the mental health and wellness of Indigenous children, youth, and families.” Most importantly, she believes that Indigenous women deserve to have a voice in shaping programs intended to support them, and that “their perspectives are important in ensuring that violence prevention programs, such as Connections, are relevant to their needs.”
Hill’s interest in this research developed during her undergraduate studies at McMaster University. While there, she participated in several community-engaged research projects that sparked “a deep interest in pursuing research with and for communities.”
The Connections manual was originally adapted for Indigenous communities 10 years ago. Working with BTC, Hill’s research aims to identify necessary revisions to this manual by “identifying how it can be strengthened to better support the needs of Indigenous women experiencing violence in relationships.”
The revisions examine two perspectives: “professional experience in violence prevention programming,” and “those who have completed Connections.” Her preliminary findings suggest that while the existing Indigenous Connections manual has many strengths, it also has “several challenges and gaps” that “emphasize the need for a revision.”
Another participant in the studentship is Jill Williams, a PhD student at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Her research explores how sewing and time spent together as a community can create space for Inuit women to connect, share knowledge, and have difficult conversations. The work of this research is to bring elders together all over Nunatsiavut to sew, strengthen community, and “see if our mental and physical health feels better by sitting together.”
“If we brought things back to relational practice, to sitting with elders, to sewing together, and letting a conversation flow,” Williams asks, “would there be knowledge in that?”
Williams is soon to be the second Nunatsiavut Inuit person to graduate with a PhD in Social Work. However, she hopes this will not be seen as a remarkable act. “I want there to be 100 people behind me. I don’t want it to be just the two of us,” Williams expresses. “I want it to be all of us.”
Williams reflected on the institutional barriers faced by those whose educational experiences differ from conventional academic pathways, expressing that “academia makes things really, really inaccessible to people like me, who have not been educated the same way that maybe other people have.” By making her own research more accessible, Williams wants others to see her achievement as something they can pursue. “I’m hoping that they will say, “well, if Jill did it, I can do it too.””
Applications for the Mitacs Annual Indigenous Mental Health Studentship are open until Wednesday, Oct. 28. To learn more about the studentship, you can visit the MHRC website. Eligible York students are encouraged to consider applying for this opportunity to develop their research experience and contribute to Indigenous mental health research.
