The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ways in which the Making it Work study team engages in allyship work. Making it Work is a community-based research (CBR) study looking to highlight how integrated community services for people living HIV, hepatitis C, and/or challenges with mental health or substance use work best for people accessing them. This project has a particular focus on services that are provided through an Indigenous worldview of health and that have a commitment to cultural safety for their clients. Allyship is taken up in three main ways on the Making it Work team; there is allyship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous team members, between those with lived or living HIV, hepatitis C or challenges with substance use or mental health and those who do not have lived experiences, as well as between academics on the Making it Work team and the people coming to this work from community-based organization or the larger community impacted by the study. The methodology used in order to create this paper was in the form of reviewing existing literature and engaging with a variety of study team members through email and teleconference in order to attain their input on their experiences with allyship on the Making it Work study. Based on the team members’ reflections, key findings related to the improvement of allyship on the team is to 1) Democratize power and flatten the hierarchy of decision-making through the act of capacity bridging on study teams, 2) Actively work to uplift other forms of knowledge and information sharing, such as Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Doing and/or knowledge of lived and living experiences to an equal footing with academic knowledge, and, 3) Centralize the voices of people with lived and living experiences on teams.

About the Authors

​Katsistohkwí:io Jacco is the Graduate Research Trainee for the Making it Work project, and is an MA student at the University of Victoria in Political Science and Indigenous Nationhood. Tsisto@pacificaidsnetwork.org. She is a bear clan from the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) nation, and is grateful to be living on the beautiful lands of the Lekwungen and WSÁNEĆ peoples as a guest. 

Madeline Gallard is the Community-Based Research Coordinator for the Pacific AIDS Network. Madeline is of primarily Western European descent. Madeline is a White settler and is grateful to live their life on these beautiful ancestral, traditional, unceded lands of the Stó:lō people.

Joanna Mendell is the Research Coordinator for the Making it Work Project at the Pacific AIDS Network. Joanna was born into a white settler family on Coast Salish Territory where she spent most of her life. She now has the privilege of living in the north of what is often called BC, where she enjoys the mountains, rivers, lakes and forests of unceded traditional Wet’suwet’en territory. ​

​Darren Lauscher is a PAN PHA volunteer. His mother’s side of the family comes from the British Isles and eventually settled in Saskatchewan. On his father’s side, Darren is a second-generation settler, as his parents immigrated from Germany and also settled in Saskatchewan. Darren now resides in Vancouver as a settler on the unceded territories of Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. 

​Deb Schmitz, Executive Director, Pacific Hepatitis C Network (PHCN). Deb Schmitz is of western European, Scandinavian and English ancestry.  She was born into settler families on traditional, unceded Secwepemuc (suh-Wep-muhc) territory to settler parents and has lived as an uninvited, grateful guest on the traditional, unceded territories of Katzie, Sto:lo, Mowachaht/Muchalaht, Tla’amin, Ditidaht, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Wet’suwet’en, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and shishalh Nations. 

​Michelle Stewart is a Peer Research Associate with the Making it Work project at the Pacific AIDS Network and also works as a receptionist and Peer Advocate at Positive Living North.  Michelle is Métis and was born in Edmonton while growing up mostly in Prince George on traditional territory of the Lheidli T'enneh.  

​Dr. Catherine Worthington is a co-investigator on the Making it Work study and a Professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria. She lives on the traditional territories of the WSÁNEĆ peoples on Vancouver Island, and is of mixed (Hungarian, British, Scottish) European heritage. 

​Dr. Nancy Clark is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Human and Social Development, School of Nursing at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and is co-Principal Investigator of the Making it Work project. Dr. Clark is of bi racial heritage and first-generation immigrant to Canada from the former Yugoslavia and Palestine; and self identifies as she/her. She is a visitor and settler on Southern Vancouver Island on which the University of Victoria sits with the Lekwungen peoples, Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples whose historical relationships with the land continues to this day. 

​Janice Duddy is the Director of Evaluation and Community-Based Research at the Pacific AIDS Network (PAN) and is co-Principal Knowledge User on the Making it Work project. Janice is an uninvited settler of European descent and is grateful to live on the traditional, unceded territories of the Semiahmoo, Katzie, S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Coast Salish and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples where she lives with her family of boys -- husband, two sons, and her dog Skeena who loves walking on the beach of these beautiful lands. 

​Sherri Pooyak is a Community-Based Research Manager at the AHA Centre/Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network (CAAN). Sherri is of Cree ancestry from Sweetgrass First Nation, Saskatchewan and currently resides in Victoria, BC. She is the co-Principal Knowledge User on the MIW project.