Improving Shelter Experience for Indigenous Women

Mapping Survivors' Help-Seeking Journeys and Experiences

Abstract

This StoryMap is one component of the study Improving Shelter Experience for Indigenous Women by Circling Buffalo Inc. and RESOLVE Manitoba. The study focuses on the experiences of Indigenous women who seek help for intimate partner violence  (IPV) from Indigenous and non-Indigenous women's shelters in rural and urban Manitoba. Indigenous survivors and service providers were interviewed about their experiences with help-seeking and asked how accessing and staying at shelter could be improved, especially to be more culturally safe. The interviews highlighted that help-seeking is complex and influenced by a multitude of factors. Using maps and narrative, this StoryMap illuminates the geospatial determinants of help-seeking and the geospatial barriers that uniquely or disproportionately impact Indigenous women.  In addition to illustrating these geospatial determinants and Indigenous-specific geospatial barriers, the StoryMap illustrates how they are rooted in, and reflective of, colonialism.