Capacity Interrupted: The Kloshe Tillicum Graduate Student Training Experience

Abstract

In response to the 2001 Canadian Institutes of Health Research-Institute of AboriginalPeoples Health (CIHR-IAPH) national initiative to develop research capacity in Abo­riginal Health Research (AHR), a team of British Columbia (BC) researchers embarkedon a graduate student training program. The rationale was to improve Aboriginalhealth outcomes by creating a research agenda that would be enacted by the next gen­eration of highly-trained Aboriginal health researchers. The program, eventuallyknown as Kloshe Tillicum: Healthy People, Healthy Relations (KT), included studentsat the four research-intensive universities in the province and provided scholarships,mentorship, academic skill development, writing retreats, and other activities designedto promote and encourage students into high-level careers in Aboriginal health research(AHR). Inherent in the development of such a program was the adoption of a trainingmethodology that could challenge existing research paradigms while encompassingnew Indigenous research methodologies emerging from community and place-based re­search. An adaptation ofKirkness and Barnhardt's (1991) 4Rs of Indigenous education(respect, relevance, reciprocity, responsibility) offered a solution but inadvertently high­lighted the potential danger of erasing individual, Indigenous nation-based identities in favour of an essentialized, universal, or single Indigenous identity. Kloshe Tillicumfound that students required support on at least three levels: financial, methodological,and social. Funding for the program ended in 2014 and, while AHR capacity was in­creased, the process has only just begun. This paper examines the KT graduate trainingexperience through student profiles, self-reporting, and career outcomes to reflect onthe potential impact on AHR in BC. With its loss, is capacity interrupted?