"It's not mine at all. It's ours as a group"

After more than two decades of on-the-ground, collaborative community-based research with Inuit communities, a Faculty of Social Work researcher is being recognized with a University of Calgary Research Excellence Chair.

For Dr. Patricia (Patti) Johnston, PhD, her research did not begin in a university classroom. It began in Nunavut, where she worked alongside Inuit families and saw first-hand how child welfare and social service systems were harming communities.

After years of hearing about inadequate services, she asked families and Elders what they envisioned and how she could do her own work differently. This prompted her to turn to the academic literature for guidance, where she found little about the colonial structures shaping services in Nunavut.

“Without having academic articles for policymakers to turn to, there's not a lot of concrete decision making that is in alignment with the women and the families,” says Johnston, an assistant professor with UCalgary Social Work.

“It became very evident that I had to go back to school and go into research to participate in a way that could be most helpful to the families I was engaging with.” 

That experience set Johnston on a path from working on the ground to graduate studies and community-based research.  

Recognition — and responsibility

The UCalgary Research Excellence Chairs program recognizes accomplished scholars with exceptional promise in their research and creative work, while building capacity and leadership for strategic and transdisciplinary research initiatives. The five-year appointment will help Johnston sustain relationships, create greater visibility for work co-created with Inuit women and communities, and bring people together around community-defined priorities.

“It’s a tremendous honour,” Johnston says. “It filled me with such extreme gratitude for all the people who make this work possible and for all the relationships that already exist. It’s also a tremendous responsibility to keep building on the relationships that support this work and work that matters to the communities.”

For Johnston, the recognition belongs to a much wider circle. She is insistent on her position not as the owner of the work, but as one contributor within a collective.

“Some of the women I work with, this has been their life’s work,” she says. “I help get it on paper. I help bring it to light: make it more visible and celebrate their efforts. I never want to take credit for this, because it’s not mine at all. It’s ours as a group.”

Research shaped by community

Johnston’s current research supports Inuit-led efforts to reshape perinatal care and maternal and child health in Canada. She works alongside Inuit Elders, women, youth, leaders, community members and organizations to better understand barriers to perinatal health and wellness, strengthen culturally responsive supports, and reduce family separations, especially those that can accompany travel for childbirth and medical care.

“The research is often the critical piece that’s needed for those decision makers,” says Johnston. For her work, she considers “research excellence” to be relational, accountable, grounded in Inuit knowledge and directed by Inuit communities. Rigour comes through deep participation and through findings that people recognize as true to their own experiences.

“Research excellence happens in a very collaborative way within these communities,” she says. “The work is so highly participatory that, when it is produced, everyone who has been part of it can say, ‘Yes, that speaks to our experience.’”

A learner among many researchers

Although the Research Excellence Chair appointment recognizes Johnston as a researcher, she is more inclined to describe herself as a lifelong learner. Her approach expands the institutional idea of who produces knowledge: the women, Elders and youth involved in a project are not simply participants, but researchers who bring distinct expertise.

“I see the women in the North that I work with as researchers. I see the Elders I work with as researchers. I see the youth I work with as researchers,” Johnston says. “I’m just part of that mix. I bring one skill set and one kind of utility to the group, and everybody else brings their different skill sets, knowledge and capacities.”