Families navigating community resources: understanding and supporting Nunavimmiut families.

In a project aiming to develop community-led resources for families in northern Quebec, Canada, members (Inuit and non-Inuit) of the project decided to meet with Inuit parents to hear their experiences and needs, and to better understand how family dynamics might be related to ways of using resources within communities. In this article, we present secondary analyses of interviews conducted in 2015 with 14 parents living in a community of Nunavik, northern Quebec, accompanied by participatory analysis sessions. A dual data analysis strategy was adopted. Non-Inuit researchers and research assistants with significant lived experience in Nunavik explored what they learned from the stories that Inuit parents shared with them through the interviews and through informal exchanges. Inuit partners then discussed the large themes identified by the research team to guide non-Inuit researchers in their analysis. The aim was to better inform non-Inuit service providers and people whose mandate it is to support community mobilisation in relation to the heterogeneous realities of Inuit families, and the ways in which they can be of support to families based on their specific realities and needs.

Exploring Community Mobilization in Northern Quebec: Motivators, Challenges, and Resilience in Action.

Nunavimmiut (people of the land) are the Indigenous peoples of the northern peninsula of the province of Quebec. Communities of Nunavik and its regional organizations have been making concerted efforts in implementing community-based strategies to support family wellbeing. These community strategies are grounded in many of the values underpinning community psychology: favoring empowerment-oriented approaches, fostering community capacity, and transforming organizational cultures to allow for new modes of interaction, as well as new policies and practices that are grounded in community and culture. Despite the growing support and expectation for community mobilization, there is still very little research on the processes and challenges to such mobilization. In this study, we explored the unique challenges and facilitators to community endeavors in northern Quebec in order to better understand the complex dynamics and the strengths that Inuit build upon. We first used a focused ethnographic approach in the context of a 5-year community mobilization project in Nunavik. We then conducted 12 individual interviews and two small group interviews with Inuit working on community-based wellbeing-oriented mobilization projects in four additional communities. Results expose how sociogeographical realities and colonialism influence the process of community mobilization. They also highlight the values and motivational factors that lead community members to move beyond these influences.