June 17, 2026

National Indigenous History Month is an opportunity to reflect on how Indigenous partnerships, leadership, and ways of knowing are shaping health research across Canada. At Can-SOLVE CKD, those partnerships are helping researchers rethink not only what research is done, but how it is done. 

Through collaborations with Indigenous patient partners, Knowledge Keepers, communities, and Indigenous leaders, research teams are learning to listen differently, build relationships more intentionally, and design projects that better reflect community priorities and lived experiences of people with chronic kidney disease (CKD). 

Can-SOLVE CKD research teams such as APPROACH, which is improving decision-making for people living with both CKD and cardiovascular disease, and Self-Management, which has developed an interactive website to help people with CKD learn more about their disease and how to manage it, demonstrate how cultural safety and community partnership can influence every stage of research—from engagement and implementation to the development of tools and resources. 

To support this work, Can-SOLVE CKD provides research teams with access to learning opportunities such as the Learning Pathway, San’yas Indigenous Cultural Safety Training, and OCAP® training (Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession). These resources help build a deeper understanding of Indigenous histories, perspectives, and culturally safer approaches to engagement. 

But for many researchers, some of the most important learning has happened through relationships—by listening to Indigenous patient partners, Knowledge Keepers, and communities, and rethinking long-held assumptions about how research is conducted. 

Looking beyond the data

For implementation scientist Dr. Mo Donald, an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine and co-lead of the Self-Management project, one of the most significant lessons was recognizing that meaningful Indigenous engagement begins long before data collection. 

As the Self-Management project team explored how My Kidneys My Health—their evidence-informed website co-designed with patients to support self-management for people with CKD—could better support Indigenous communities, the team found itself rethinking some of its original assumptions. 

“We initially focused on identifying gaps in kidney self-management,” says Donald. “But through our engagement with Indigenous patient partners and communities, we realized we also needed to think about how we were talking about kidney disease, research, and self-management, and how those conversations were happening.” 

Rather than beginning with research questions, data collection methods, or anticipated outcomes, the team focused first on understanding how Indigenous communities wanted to be engaged and what was most important to them. 

The process challenged assumptions about research and highlighted the importance of community-specific approaches. Donald notes that researchers can sometimes assume an approach that works in one community will work everywhere. Through engagement with Indigenous patient partners and communities, the Self-Management team learned that each community brings its own priorities, experiences, strengths, and perspectives. 

Members of the Self-Management project team, Indigenous patient partners, and Knowledge Keepers.

“We went into this work focused on what might be missing for Indigenous communities,” says Donald. “Over time, we learned the importance of also recognizing strengths, existing knowledge, and what is already working within communities.”

The team plans to continue engaging with and learning from Indigenous patient partners, communities, and Knowledge Keepers before making new adaptations to the My Kidneys My Health website.

For Donald, the experience reinforced that meaningful engagement is not a step within the research process—it is the foundation upon which the research is built. 

Shaping better research

Clinician-scientist Dr. Matt James, co-lead of the APPROACH project and professor at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine, has also seen how Indigenous engagement can enhance research by offering different experiences and perspectives that shine a light on inequities in health research and care. 

“I can think of how, in our own projects, we did things that, had we not been thinking about those disparities in care, that lack of knowledge in the health care system, and how it affects patients and their outcomes and experiences, we would have just kept going with large gaps,” says James. 

Through partnerships with Indigenous patient partners, Knowledge Keepers, Indigenous leaders, and organizations across Alberta, the APPROACH team has worked to better understand barriers to care and ensure project tools are relevant and meaningful for the people they are intended to support. 

Indigenous patient partners have been active members of the research team, contributing to project discussions, attending team meetings, and presenting alongside researchers at conferences. Their involvement has also helped shape how the team approaches shared decision-making, including discussions about how patient values, preferences, and Indigenous ways of knowing can be respectfully incorporated into conversations about kidney and cardiovascular care. 

As part of its engagement efforts, the team has also presented its patient decision aid directly to Indigenous patient partners and community representatives, recognizing the importance of in-person conversations as an early step toward building trust and fostering meaningful relationships. 

According to James, that commitment has had a lasting impact. 

“There are absolutely components of all of these projects that would not exist if we did not have that commitment,” he says. 

Dr. Matt James, nephrologist and co-PI (left) and patient partner Maureena Loth (right)

Learning through partnership

While training and educational resources provide an important foundation, both Donald and James emphasize that when it comes to cultural competency, some of the most meaningful learning happens through relationships. 

Donald credits Indigenous patient partners and members of the Indigenous Peoples’ Engagement and Research Council (IPERC) Violet March and Maureena Loth with imparting valuable lessons to project team members.

“Indigenous patient partners and community members helped us better understand relational approaches to engagement and the importance of learning from local context,” she says.

As Can-SOLVE CKD continues its commitment to Indigenous engagement in research, experiences from projects such as APPROACH and Self-Management demonstrate how cultural safety can shape not only individual learning, but also the way research is designed, implemented, and translated into practice in equitable and meaningful ways. 

Explore Can-SOLVE CKD’s Learning Pathway, consisting of the Land Acknowledgment Learning Series, Knowledge Keepers in Research guidebook, and other tools that support culturally safer research, meaningful engagement, and respectful partnerships with Indigenous communities.