Capacity Interrupted: The Kloshe Tillicum Graduate Student Training Experience
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14288/cjne.v37i1.196561Abstract
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?