Cultural healing at the intersection of the climate crisis and mental health
Dr. Suzanne Stewart, a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, never planned on dedicating so much of her research and clinical career to Indigenous psychology. In contrast, her surroundings during her formative school years left her feeling a need to suppress her Indigenous identity.
"I grew up in the 70s and 80s when being Native wasn't really allowed or accepted, and I spent a large part of my younger life pretending not to be Indigenous by dressing certain ways or doing certain things," said the Toronto resident.
With racism and bullying taking its toll, Stewart decided to leave school and her foster home at 13-years-old to live on her own. Ten years later, she found herself captivated by an article on Sigmund Freud that drove her decision to return to school with the eventual goal of becoming a psychologist.
"I was very passionate about what I was learning and reading about psychology because it really helped me make sense of all the devastation I saw in my family and my community," said the director of the University of Toronto's Waakebiness Institute for Indigenous Health.
"I saw psychology as a way to get me out of poverty and dysfunction to becoming a professional," she said.
A responsibility to the community
As she neared the end of her post-secondary schooling, Indigenous-specific pursuits weren't on Dr. Stewart's career radar.
"I just wanted to get my piece of paper and go out and be a regular person working in the world," she said.
"Everything in my life had always been so wrapped up in the trauma of being Native."
Starting in graduate school however, Indigenous communities repeatedly requested contributions from Dr. Stewart on research and clinical work. Feeling a community responsibility, she never stopped saying 'yes,' and over time Dr. Stewart concluded she was exactly where she needed to be as Toronto's leading Indigenous mental health authority.
"I'm very grateful and I think it was definitely meant to be," she said.
"We go through a lot of difficult things being Indigenous, and we learn to make sense of them by understanding that everything happens as an opportunity for healing and growth."
Clayton Shirt, her frequent research collaborator, knows this sentiment all too well. While not keen on the construct of official titles, he's generally referred to as a 'traditional knowledge keeper' and 'Elder in Residence' with the University of Toronto.
"With the residential school experience, the colonization, the genocide etcetera, we're all in the process of healing ourselves," said Shirt, who was born on the Saddle Lake Cree Nation and raised in Toronto.
"We're going to get over this trauma through our ways of knowing and being, because that's the only way for us to be a human being again."
In his roles with the University of Toronto, he helps guide Indigenous students on their own healing paths in addition to helping proliferate traditional knowledge and Indigenous ways of learning to students and faculty more broadly.
"Indigenous people have a superpower, and that is building relationships," Shirt said.
"We're working on our relationships with our youth, with our Elders, with the dominant culture. And we're always going to be that way, and we're always going to share."
Mental health and the climate crisis
Now, with Dr. Stewart as the principal investigator and Shirt as an advisor and liaison with youth and Indigenous communities, the pair are central to a team working on the research project Indigenous youth and mental health: Indigenous knowledges solutions for personal and community healing and the climate crisis. The community-based evaluation is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research through the Catalyst Grant : Standards for Children and Youth Mental Health Services.
It began with a pilot project last summer when Indigenous youth and Elders met in the Northwest Territories and Toronto. The youth outlined overarching themes about how the climate crisis impacts their mental health.
"Young people have a lot of concerns about the environment, and they feel heavily impacted to the point where they feel like they don't want to have children or have a family because they don't think that the Earth is a healthy and safe and sustainable place to bring new life," Dr. Stewart explained.
"I thought that was a pretty big thing to hear kids say, 'Yeah, my depression or anxiety is not about what's going on in my life. It's about what's going on in the natural environment.'"
Along with community partners Institute for Circumpolar Health Research in the Northwest Territories and Toronto's 2-Spirited People of the 1st Nations and Native Women's Resource Centre of Toronto, Dr. Stewart and her team are using surveys, interviews, focus groups and data evaluation to develop climate-focused youth mental health programs and interventions that include evaluation tools based in Indigenous traditional knowledges. They anticipate launching these programs this fall, when it would be subject to ongoing evaluation before being considered for implementation on a larger scale.
"Finally, Indigenous people's voices are being asked to be heard," Stewart said.
"Now we have to move to the next step of mobilizing the knowledge that's being shared by our young people, Elders and communities, and ensuring that the people who are still in full control of our lives –the government – are still willing to give us the space, autonomy and funds that we need to continue to allow people to self-determine their health, well-being and their lives."
While barriers of racism and systemic oppression still have a daily impact on the mental well-being of Indigenous youth, the research team maintains a positive outlook.
"Youth are coming out of that hole of hopelessness and despair and getting into a place of hope and we're saying, 'here's the next part, here's action you can take,'" Shirt said.
"It's through knowledge, through traditional ways of knowing and being, through research. They're slowly seeing that and saying 'oh, okay, I understand now,' and it's amazing to be a part of it."
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