Healing, Empowering, Engaging, Learning, and Decolonizing Through Culture: Living Wellness, Resilience, and Resurgence in the Classroom Through Creative Arts

Abstract

Art and Indigenous culture are inseparable. From the immaculately decorated lodges and war shirts of thousands of years to contemporary mixed and digital media images, Indigenous arts are expressions of survivance. Creative arts have sustained Indigenous ways of knowing, being, doing, and healing through attempted cultural genocide. Research has shown that art engages youth in life skill-building, learning, emotional regulating, and spiritual healing, supporting art as an intervention for wellness. Culturally-based artistic expression and the process of creating promotes wellness among Indigenous youth. As primary sites of assimilation and colonialism, educational institutions have a responsibility to enact reconciliation through culturally-rooted arts-based approaches to wellness. School psychologists are wellpositioned to support these approaches. This study took place in Kainaiwa in Southern Alberta and explored Niitsitapi artists’ and educators’ perspectives on the impacts of culturally-rooted arts-based interventions with Niitsitapi middle school students in the classroom. Over 2 days, professional Indigenous artists shared their art practices with students at a middle school in Kainai First Nation in Alberta. We had research conversations with 12 Niitsitapi community members involved in the event using a decolonizing, community-based approach. Indigenous storywork was used to understand research conversations, highlighting information and guidance for school psychologists to inform their engagement with Indigenous students and community members in schools. Findings emphasized art as healing, particularly given its connection to culture. Further, cultural engagement through art supports student wellness and educational engagement. Art can be used to empower voice, overcome deficit narratives, create new stories, and cope with disharmony. Art can also engage youth in discovery and learning, providing an alternative to a lecture style of learning, increasing enjoyment in the classroom experience. These findings have practical implications for future interventions and the integration of art pedagogically. This paper offers recommendations that highlight stark distinctions between culturally-rooted art practice and conventional Eurocentric art approaches in education.