A substantial part of CIET’s work in Canada has been in partnership with First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities. Since 1995, CIET has aimed to build research and planning capacities in First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities across Canada, so that they are able to design and carry out their own research with little external assistance. We have collaborated with First Nations, Métis and Inuit organizations and band councils in the following initiatives:

•  Cigarette use among Native Canadian youth in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1995
• First Nations Youth Inquiry into Tobacco Use, 1996
• Aboriginal Youth Resilience to HIV/AIDS (ACRA), 1998-present
• Problems of Urban Aboriginal Youth, 1996
• AFN evaluation of the Canada Prenatal Nutrition Programme, 2001-2003
• Anisnabe Kekendazone – Network Environment for Aboriginal Health Research (AK-NEAHR – formerly ACADRE)
• The Aboriginal Community Youth Resilience Network (ACYRN)
• Preventing Domestic Violence in Aboriginal Communities

In the course of this work we have partnered with major national First Nations, Métis and Inuit organizations, including
Assembly of First Nations, Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, MétisNational Council, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami,We have worked with, or are currently linked to,   Native Women’s Association of Canada. Nechi Institute, Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network (CAAN), Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay, Native Counselling Services of Alberta, Tlicho Community Services Board, The National Aboriginal Circle against Family Violence, Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project and First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada.

Although there is a wide range of relationships, some very new and others quite mature, community-led research and capacity building are at the core of these joint efforts. A special collection of articles on CIET’s work with First Nations, Métis and Inuit in Canada is published in the Summer 2008 issue of Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Indigenous and Aboriginal Community Health.

To help build health research capacities among the Inuit in northern Canada, CIET has helped establish an Inuit Institute for Research and Planning, starting in 2008.

CIHR Centre for Intercultural Research on Prevention of Gender Violence

Located at the University of Ottawa Institute of Population Health. The Centre focuses on migrating minorities through a novel approach that links Aboriginal and immigrant groups in cities with their home communities. The Centre will generate proposals for intervention research with partner communities of origin and with urban groups: the Nakota Sioux in Alexis and Edmonton; the Mohawk in Akwesasne and Ottawa /Toronto, Inuit living in Ottawa and in the north, and a subgroup of the Ottawa Latin American immigrant community.

Local Public Health Infrastructure Development (LoPHID)
 
From 1998 through 2000, CIET worked on Health Canada’s LoPHIDproject in five health regions in the Atlantic Provinces (Labrador, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia Northern Region, Nova Scotia Eastern Region, Prince Edward Island). The aim of LoPHID was to increase local capacity to plan strategically, obtain local evidence and put it to work for better health. The partner health regions focused on a variety of public health issues, including perinatal care, youth resiliency, breastfeeding and heart health. Public health nurses who participated in LoPHID received substantial additional training and four of them obtained master’s degrees in epidemiology through CIET.