Research and Development

Every day, our researchers at Carrier Sekani Family Services help us work towards an important goal: improving the programs that we offer.

Our department's official goal is, "To improve health, social, and legal services through the creation of evidence-based community knowledge."

Our research team can do this in many ways. Sometimes, it’s as simple as asking a child if they learned new ideas after going to culture camp – when most of the answers are positive, we know the program is doing the right thing. Other times, our researchers will ask questions about the big picture, such as “What issues do you face in your community?” or “In a perfect world, what would families be like?”

But no matter what questions our researchers ask, the next step is always the same: they listen. They listen to the wisdom that elders share with them. They listen as parents talk about ways to keep children healthy and safe. They listen as teens describe feeling lost or alone. Our research team listens, because they know there would be no learning without it.

And once they finish listening and carefully recording answers and writing up reports, they share what they have learned with all the Carrier Sekani communities and our staff. Our researchers give back because they want to keep knowledge flowing.

Over the past few years, the Carrier Sekani Family Services research team has worked on a number of projects. There are too many to list, but here are a few of our favourites:

1) Helping New Fathers Be Strong Fathers – in this study, we asked questions about how Carrier and Sekani fathers raise their children. As we talked to new fathers, we learned that many of them felt alone. Many of them worried about how they would raise their tiny baby.

These young men shared their worries but also talked about what would help them be better dads. We used their ideas and answers to write a guidebook for new Aboriginal parents. The young men we spoke to can hold their heads high, because they have helped the next generation of new fathers.

2) The Food Carrier People Eat Today – in this study, we asked questions about what people normally eat each day. As we looked at the foods eaten in 11 Aboriginal communities, we saw that only a few people ate traditional foods all the time. Others did not, because they did not remember how to prepare food in the Carrier way.

Using what we learned from talking to these communities, Carrier Sekani Family Services decided it would be good if children learned about traditional foods right from the start. Now, our culture camps have days when elders show happy teens how to smoke salmon. Our Walk Tall program has workshops for youth to learn about traditional ways of eating. This research helped Carrier Sekani Family Services make good programs even better.

Right now, the research department is also in the middle of several projects.

Train Youth To Use Our Nges Siy Suicide Prevention Manual – one of our research projects was about youth suicide. Teens told us that having a friend their age could help them feel less alone. Using everything they told us, we wrote a guide that teaches youth how they can be a support to others going through a difficult time. Right now, we are training teens how to use this new Nges Siy Suicide Prevention Manual. Then they will go back to their communities and train others.

Plan A New Child Welfare Program – one day in the future, Carrier Sekani Family Services will have its own child welfare program. We just finished asking elders, communities, youth, and families how we could create a healing child welfare model based on Carrier values. Right now, we are reading all the answers they gave us.

Our research team’s mission is simple: to improve services in ways that will help Carrier First Nations. They do this by respectfully learning about our member nations, and listening to what they need and want. All the research they do belongs to our member nations and is for their benefit.

If you are a researcher who is interested in conducting a study in Carrier Sekani territory, please contact Carrier Sekani Family Services by calling 250-562-3591 and ask for Travis Holyk.