From TheStarPhoenix.com

Research turns 'Indian problem' on its head

 BY SHINOAH YOUNG - JUNE 17, 2013

Cassandra Opikokew has been awarded $100,000 to research policy-making through an indigenous lens. - Photograph by: Troy Fleece, The Leader-Post , Leader-Post

Cassandra Opikokew grew up feeling as if there was a government-imposed "Indian problem" that needed to be dealt with or handled.

She said being assigned a specific treaty number from the time an Indian is born is part of the way the Canadian government dictates policies to control indigenous people's health and education.

For instance, she said going to the dentist or deciding who to marry have entirely different outcomes and implications if you are aboriginal, compared to non-aboriginal Canadians.

The 27-year-old from Canoe Lake First Nation in northwest Saskatchewan is looking deeper into this issue from an indigenous perspective.

Using her academic capacity as a researcher and a full-time PhD candidate at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Regina, Opikokew is taking the past colonial-imposed framework, views about policy failure and the "Indian problem" and "turning it on its head."

Opikokew said it's the "imposed colonial policy that has actually failed us."

"Very little research exists on traditional policy-making amongst indigenous peoples in North America prior to contact," she said.

"Until the policymaking process and institutions are properly examined with an indigenous lens and lessons are drawn from policy cases of success and failure, policy-makers will continue using a policymaking system and decision-making perspective that fails to improve outcomes for indigenous people."

Associate director at Indigenous Peoples' Health Research Centre (IPHRC), Opikokew won a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) doctoral research award in April - a $108,000 stipend over the next three years.

The allotted funds will also support travel costs for her dissertation project, titled The Indian Solution to the Policy Problem: Developing an Indigenous Policy Making Model, in which she is comparing health and education policy failure among indigenous populations within Canada, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.

Kelly Vantkoughnet, associate vice-president of research and knowledge translation at the CIHR, said the research award goes far beyond an applicant's excellence in academics, with more than 1,000 doctoral candidates applications received each year.

"The competition is so stiff, we're talking the top 10 per cent of applicants (in the country)," Vantkoughnet said.

Opikokew was one of about 180 Canadian doctoral students chosen by CIHR for dissertation research funding this year.

"Cassandra's was a most excellent application," Vantkoughnet said.

"(It was) very intuitive and really demonstrated innovation in terms of what kind of project (IPHRC) was putting forward."

Opikokew has also aligned herself with a mentor of stature and was able to communicate her passion for what needs to be specifically done within the community.

Since its inception in 1999, the CIHR has been working to build more capacity within aboriginal researchers' community-based projects.

According to Vantkoughnet, policy research within indigenous communities is important because of the many issues regarding past research sensitivities.

She said when doing this type of work, there is "a real cultural competency that is required."

"It's not Indians that are the problem; it's policy itself that's the problem," Opikokew said.