5. What are the key findings?
Results indicate that Indigenous youth define and enact self-determination through three shared approaches:

i) Traditional healing and embracing cultural wellness practices.

• Intentionally (re)connecting to traditional healing and cultural practices is vital to improving mental health and wellness.
• Healing through relationships with cultural ceremonies and community practices can mitigate the cultural impacts of colonization.
• Engaging in ceremony, which requires confronting the impacts of colonization.
• Reclaiming cultural and community practices in ways that make sense for the daily lives of youth.

ii) Shared lived/living experience and meeting people where they’re at.

• Sharing personal and cultural wisdom from their life experiences with other young people is vital to youth wellness promotion.
• Supporting this reciprocal recognition encourages the spread of radical resurgence through everyday acts of culture reclamation and self-determination.
• Emphasizing balance and non-coercive healing practices through sharing needs and listening to yourself and others.
• Sharing and honouring different journeys and defining self-determination for yourself leads to finding tools for wellness.

iii) Community inclusion (ensuring a wide range of people with diverse lived experiences and cultural knowledge are present) and intuitive practice.

• Involving community members of many ages.
• Speaking to leadership structures run by and for Indigenous youth to centre Indigenous voices.
• Being able to work in a completely self-determined and fully Indigenous way without the need for approval or input from non-Indigenous people.

6. Why does it matter for youth work?
The young people in this study highlight the impacts of colonization on wellbeing, the multidimensional and holistic nature of health, and the healing impact of increased autonomy in Indigenous communities. Any solutions to improve Indigenous youth wellbeing must be grounded in the community’s conceptualizations of wellness and led by young people within their communities. Youth workers should consider positioning themselves as advocates of Indigenous youth autonomy and support Indigenous young people as they find their path to wellbeing.

Emphasis must be placed on redistributing power and resources to bring to light the active and self-determining ways that youth build power for health transformation. Self-determination should be a primary focus of Indigenous youth health research and the implementation of mental health programming for Indigenous young people. This includes identifying colonialism as a barrier to Indigenous youth wellness, as colonization (re)produces trauma and alienation.

In addition to decolonizing existing spaces, Indigenous young people describe the importance of creating their own spaces, characterized by the freedom to express themselves. Engaging in cultural-based spirituality, encouraging healing journeys, engaging young people through reciprocal recognition, and allowing Indigenous young people to discover self-determination wellness are all protective factors anchored in Indigenous community leadership and self-governance. Indigenous youth self-determination wellness calls for a relational strategy that includes re-negotiating relationships with settlers and the state while centering Indigenous working methods.