Listening to Indigenous Girls' Experiences of Warmth and Caring: A Qualitative Study

Indigenous Girls in Canada face the results of centuries of compounded social, economic, psychological, and spiritual harms due to the disrupting force of colonization, which still carries harms today and reveals itself in gaping disparities between the wellbeing of Indigenous children and the general population of children in Canada. Indigenous scholars frame the residential school system as morphing into the child welfare system (Blackstock, 2007). Family relationships were ruptured under colonization, residential schools, and the child welfare systems. All of these disruptions created intergenerational trauma, leaving children to navigate life with memories of the threads of caring moments they have received from significant relationships. The present study focused on the voices of 16 Indigenous girls and their memories of caring moments. Half of the girls in this study had been referred to services at an Anishinaabe family care center (i.e., an Indigenous child and family mental health care centre); the other half were girls from the surrounding communities. The purpose of this study was to listen to the girls voices regarding what they have received from significant people in their lives. An inductive thematic analysis of interview transcripts with eight clinically referred girls and eight community girls revealed four overarching themes: 1) Moments of Love, Warmth, and Care, 2) Relationship Expectations, 3) The Development of Socioemotional Capacities, and 4) View of Self as Caring. The model derived from these themes elaborates how moments of warmth and care create developmental experiences of growth (i.e., Relationship Expectations, Socioemotional Skills) that enable the girls to view themselves as caring. Implications for culturally competent interventions with First Nations girls are discussed.