Indigenous

Sharing Indigenous HIV/STBBI doula knowledge

UM Village Lab brings Kotawêw to life through digital storytelling.

A crackling fire and strawberries growing to represent warmth and healing
Estimated Read Time:
3 minutes
Kotawêw project report cover, illustrated with fire and strawberries
Kotawêw project report cover, illustrated with fire and strawberries
Estimated Read Time:
3 minutes

Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, trans and gender-diverse people in Manitoba continue to face disproportionately high rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBIs), alongside ongoing barriers to culturally safe care. Ongoing colonial policies have disrupted Indigenous peoples’ connections to land, family, ceremony, and community.

A new knowledge-sharing project co-led by Ka Ni Kanichihk and the Faculty of Social Work’s Village Lab, titled Kotawêw: The Indigenous HIV/STBBI Doula Project, is working to address these gaps by centring Indigenous knowledge, lived experience and community-led care.

Kotawêw - a Cree word meaning “making a fire,” reflects the project’s focus on warmth, connection, and the role of Indigenous doulas in supporting culturally safe care and igniting hope and healing.

The Kotawêw project is fully informed by community members who live with HIV, their relatives, and those who work in community to provide services, care, and supports.

Candace Neumann, Kotawêw Research Coordinator, Village Lab

Candace Neumann

Funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Indigenous Gender and Wellness Knowledge Sharing Grant, the project builds on a community-led study that explored how Indigenous doulas provide support rooted in ceremony, kinship, and lived experience. The Village Lab project team will translate those findings into digital stories for community use.

The work is being co-developed at an Indigenous-led organization Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc., with Indigenous doulas, people with lived experience, Elders, Kôhkoms, and Knowledge Holders to ensure it remains grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing and ceremony. Lavernne Gervais along with Elder Albert McLeod and Kôhkom Leslie Spillett guided this important work. 

Indigenous people remain overrepresented in HIV cases in Manitoba, yet the community-based, relational forms of care that support them are often undervalued.

Dr. Rusty Souleymanov, Director, Village Lab

Dr. Rusty Souleymanov

“The continuation of the Indigenous HIV/STBBI Doula Project into digital storytelling is an exciting progression,” says Dr. Rusty Souleymanov, associate professor and director of the Village Lab.

"Our goal with this project is to make this vital labour visible, honour Indigenous knowledge and lived experience, and create space for more compassionate understandings of HIV care."

For Candace Neumann, the project’s research coordinator and a Red River Métis doula, the work is grounded in community relationships.

“It has been an honour to be part of the stories that will be shared, as well as the development of a curriculum that will train and inform the role of Indigenous HIV doulas in Treaty 1,” she says.

“As a doula, I was approached to help start the initial consent process of asking community about developing an Indigenous HIV doula program. The community members I visited with, who shared their stories, fueled this work to move forward.”

Digital storytelling embodies creativity, symbolism, respect, relationality, reciprocity, and relevance—bringing these principles to life in ways that can be seen, heard, and felt in real time.

Skye Wikjord, Community Research Associate, Village Lab

Skye Wikjord

Melissa Morris, manager of the Village Lab and an Indigenous HIV doula at Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc., says the project is deeply rooted in community voice and lived experience.

“I am a person with lived experience in HIV/STBBI. This work is deeply personal to my experiences as an Indigenous woman navigating these areas,” she says.

“This project highlights an intervention developed by and for Indigenous peoples. With an overrepresentation of Indigenous women being diagnosed with HIV, this is a timely intervention to help create pathways and relationships.”

We often focus on healthcare being solely physical, but our health and wellness also extend into social inclusion and community kinship.

Melissa Morris, Manager, Village Lab

Melissa Morris

Skye Wikjord, who worked with the Village Lab as a research assistant while completing her MSW-IK degree, says the project reflects a strong commitment to community-based research.

“As part of the Kotawêw project, I had the privilege of conducting many visits with community members. Listening to and holding their stories has been a profound honour, and I feel a strong sense of responsibility to the relationships built through this work,” she says.

“This is more than a project to me. The violence experienced by our Indigenous communities, and the rising rates of STBBIs, are not isolated issues, they are rooted in colonial systems that continue to shape our realities.”

Advancing Indigenous-led approaches

By bringing together researchers, students, and community partners, the Village Lab continues to advance Indigenous-led approaches to health and social care while transforming research into accessible, culturally grounded resources that support Indigenous HIV/STBBI doula training and community wellness.

Established in 2021 at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Social Work, the Village Lab is an interdisciplinary research hub dedicated to decolonizing health and social care. The lab fosters deep partnerships with Indigenous scholars and community stakeholders to improve services and wellbeing for those impacted by HIV, substance use, and structural social inequities.

Boilerplate: reconciliation

At UM, we are working together to advance reconciliation for transformative change, which is among the commitments you’ll find in MomentUM: Leading change together, the University of Manitoba’s 2024–2029 strategic plan.