“You Need to Be a Well-Rounded Cultural Person”: Youth Mentorship Programs for Cultural Preservation, Promotion, and Sustainability in the Nunatsiavut Region of Labrador

Abstract

Sustainability issues are an increasing concern across the Circumpolar North. The often-intense social, health, and cultural stressors from multiple pathways—including climate change, resource extraction, socio-economic shifts, and the enduring legacies of colonization—affect social cohesion, community wellness, sense of place and heritage, livelihoods, and many cultural structures. Indigenous peoples are at the frontline of these changes and, as a result, a priority of many communities is to develop strategies to support community wellness, foster livelihoods, maintain cultural values, enhance resilience, and preserve and promote cultural continuity. Responding to these stressors and needs, and building from previous research conducted in the region that indicated a desire to ensure cultural continuity, the Inuit Community Governments of Rigolet, Makkovik, and Postville, in the Nunatsiavut region of Labrador, designed and piloted the IlikKuset-Ilingannet (Culture-Connect!) Program. This program was premised on the Inuit relational epistemology of piliriqatigiinniq (‘working in a collaborative way for the common good’), and united five youth with five adult mentors per community (n = 30) to learn cultural skills, including trapping, snowshoe-making, carving, art, and sewing. This research found that participating in the program supported hands-on knowledge transmission, created new or enhanced relationships between and among the youth and mentors; revitalized cultural pride and wellbeing; promoted cultural preservation and promotion; and showed promise as a strategy for supporting cultural sustainability and resilience to change. This resonates with growing emphasis on Indigenous-led programs supporting cultural preservation, promotion, reclamation, and resurgence, and contributes to a wholistic understanding of, and strategies for, Northern sustainabilities.