Children and COVID-19 Research Library

In response to new and exacerbated challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Indigenous children and youth in Canada have developed innovative and holistic solutions to amplify their voices, continue cultural engagement and combat social isolation for themselves and their communities as a whole. In this analysis, we have selected three Indigenous philosophical tenets as an ethical orientation for discussion of how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the well-being of Indigenous young people. The guiding values of interconnected relationships, holism and Indigenous-informed restorative justice help us interpret existing pandemic-specific literature and identify, define and prioritize considerations of child and youth well-being from an Indigenous-centred worldview. This analysis can (a) help inform future pandemic measures affecting Indigenous young people and (b) foster similar considerations for Indigenous communities in other regions of the world.

Indigenous communities continue to be under-resourced, under-funded, and overly managed and policed (Greenwood et al., 2012), which has only been exacerbated by COVID-19. Our ability to choose our own path has been gated, leaving only a singular paved road toward the center; toward assimilation. For many, this is not a choice at all.

With the current effect of globalization on cultures,it is imperative to reawaken the indigenous ways of life during this lockdown. Local centric education is the preparation of children for life to avoid cultural dislocations. It is character-based ethics and native centred philosophy, aimed at teaching and learning the indigenous ways of life