Indigenous youth find wellbeing through art and relationships

Home. Connection. Healing. Awesomenesss!

The Surrounded by Cedar and Kinship Rising Indigenous Youth Wellbeing Research Project

By Carmin Blomberg, Dorothy Stirling, and Sandrina de Finney

Kinship Rising is an Indigenous-led, community-engaged research project focused on restoring Indigenous practices of gender wellbeing. In response to the epidemic of gendered colonial violence impacting Indigenous communities, Kinship Rising works in partnership with Indigenous young people, communities and organizations across BC through land- and arts-based research workshops on issues related to gender-based reclamation, healing, and resurgence.

Kinship Rising: Restoring Body-Land Sovereignty

Home. Connection. Healing. Awesomenesss! These are words Indigenous youth chose to describe an arts-based research project on Indigenous youth wellbeing. The project is a new partnership between Kinship Rising and Surrounded by Cedar Child and Family Services (SCCFS), a local Indigenous agency that works with children and youth in foster care. The project is led by a team of amazing youth researchers from the SCCFS Youth Leadership Council, which consists of Indigenous youth in care or formerly in care.

During this project, the Youth Council has been working as a circle under the guidance of SCCFS youth facilitator Meagan Saulnier, artist and artistic mentor Yuxwelupton Qwal'qaxala (Bradley Dick), and the Kinship Rising team—Anna Chadwick, Angela Scott, Chantal Adams, and principal investigator Dr. Sandrina de Finney. Each week, the youth take part in hands-on land- and arts-based workshops focused on healing, restoring connections to land and culture, and developing leadership and art design skills. Some youth have taken on additional research tasks such as photo and multimedia documentation, surveys, digital storytelling, and writing (including co-authoring this newsletter!)

Dorothy Stirling, SCCFS Youth Leadership Council member and co-researcher with the project, shares how taking part in an arts-based research process has impacted her: “Art has always been something I’ve been passionate about and a part of what I do and who I am. I definitely didn’t think I could do as well as I did with the project. Art gave me a lot more confidence.” Dorothy describes how the workshops gave youth “new ways to make art, express ourselves and our issues, and connect together.”

For Carmin Blomberg, also a SCCFS Youth Leadership Council member and co-researcher, one of the most significant aspects of working on an Indigenous research project is “building relationships with other youth, community members, mentors, knowledge keepers, land, spirit, and all our relations.” She adds, “there is a word in my Cree language, Wetaskowin, which means ‘to live in harmony.’ This is the feeling I felt many times during our gatherings as we all met each other where we are at, with so much encouragement, guidance, and unconditional love.”

The Mural Project at Surrounded by Cedar 

The group’s most inspiring project so far is the creation of a large mural that will greet visitors when they arrive at Surrounded by Cedar. The mural conveys the powerful vision of young people who have grown up in the foster care system, to remind visitors of the spirit of Surrounded by Cedar’s work.

Dorothy talks about how the mural “brings all the Indigenous youth together from Surrounded by Cedar to talk, eat, and paint together. We all get to know each other well working on an incredible piece of art. I think it’s great helping Indigenous youth artists connect together in a good space… it feels kind of like a full circle.”

“As a youth growing up with so much loss, displacement and discrimination”, Carmin adds, “the Kinship Rising project helped me dismantle internalized colonial harm through traditional practices such as storytelling, connection to land, loving relatives and cultural wellness practices. I could feel my ancestors guiding me. All my relations heard me and released some of the pain I had been holding: We were healing together.”

Learn more about Kinship Rising projects -

Visit the Kinship Rising website

Visit the Land-Body-Art Collective website

Visit the Surrounded by Cedar website

Kinship Rising is based at the School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria. We acknowledge with great respect the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples whose sovereign homelands the university occupies, and the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ Nations whose relationships with this land remain unbroken. In making this acknowledgement, we commit to everyday practices that uphold Indigenous self-determination. Kinship Rising is supported by funding from the Canet Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Insight grants).

“I enjoyed the circle, smudge ceremony with healing medicines, sharing a meal together, and freedom to practice and take photos of what we personally envisioned.” (youth council member)