Otsin: Sharing the spirit--Development of an indigenous rural nursing practice course

Otsin is the spirt of Gitxsan Peoples and is reflected by the Gitxsan author sharing the journey in the development of a unique third year undergraduate nursing practice course. The nursing practice course immerses students in a combined rural and an interdisciplinary indigenous nursing practice. The practice course is based on a student centered, context-based teaching pedagogy using a two-eyed seeing approach. The theoretical tenet of place is reconceptualized to reflect Indigenous communities and rural nursing practice. The metaphor of weaving together cedar strips is used to reflect a journey that takes students through the experiences of living and practicing in a rural northern community while embracing on the land experiences, cultural practices, traditions, language and ceremonies. The traditional academy curricula are challenged to broaden the lens beyond the classroom theatre walls to rural, indigenous nursing practice experiences. The weaving of the cedar strips together and allows students to construct their understanding of the impacts of colonization on Indigenous Peoples and an opportunity to be guided by the community to practice cultural safety.

Communities being well for family well-being: Exploring the socio-ecological determinants of well-being in an Inuit community of Northern Quebec

Inuit communities of Canada experience many disparities in health and psychosocial context. Research in community psychology has shown associations between such socio-ecological factors and individual well-being. The objective of the study was to explore how community-level determinants of well-being influence family well-being in a northern community of Nunavik, Quebec. A total of 14 participants were interviewed. A thematic inductive analysis was conducted to extract community determinants of family well-being from the data. A system science approach was used to explore the associations between determinants and larger psychosocial dynamics. A community workshop was held to discuss the results and their meaning. A total of 25 determinants were coded, 16 of which were community-level. Community-level stressors were highly interrelated, whereas community supports were generally disconnected and superimposed on narratives of stressors. Participants spoke of desired supports. In their narratives, these supports were connected to a variety of determinants of well-being, suggesting the need to connect, redefine and support existing resources rather than simply add on new ones. We discuss intricate links between family and community well-being in small and geographically isolated communities.

Economies and Strategies of the Northern Rural Poor: the Mitigation of Poverty in a West Riding Township in the Nineteenth Century

In the agricultural township of Rigton, ten miles north of Leeds, three-quarters of labouring households had recourse to poor relief at some stage between 1815 and 1861. The chronology of this microhistory straddles the end of the French Wars, the Sturges Bourne reforms, and, due to the existence of the country's largest Gilbert Unions, the region's laggardly application of the Poor Law Amendment Act. It seeks, by source linkage, to establish the contexts of labour, welfare and the life cycle within a northern community, and place the poor and their experiences of, and strategies against, poverty within that community. A demographic overview introduces the contexts of labouring families' lives, whilst a commentary on expositions of biographical reconstitutions of two generations of a labouring family, forms a major part of this exploration. This argues that whilst relationships with, and mitigation against, poverty were fluid and complex, as the century progressed labouring families had a decreasing interface with the Poor Law, and adopted and developed new economic strategies to add to their portfolio of makeshifts.1