Pauline Sameshima

Imagination as Method

In the article the authors argue for the imagination as a central method in ethnography employed to create a more abundant, just, and connected planet. Imagination is the creative energy that links conscious with the generation of the world of material experience. Through imagination the ethnographer becomes immersed in a space of play in which the world can be imagined as something not yet or in emergence, rather than as it is. Our hope is that by employing imagination in this way, ethnography can be focused to generating new possibilities for life on the planet.

Engaging Canadian First Nations women in cervical screening through education

Recognition of the need to decrease cervical cancer rates in Indigenous populations has been ongoing – yet few successful interventions have been reported. In addition, the literature addressing the challenges and barriers associated with designing screening programs aimed to specifically reach Indigenous women is limited. Here, we report findings from a mixed methods cervical cancer research project conducted in partnership with 10 First Nations communities in Northwest Ontario, Canada. Individual interviews with community health professionals (the majority of whom identified as First Nation) stressed that awareness of cervical screening benefits is lacking. In contrast, focus group participants (women with no formal health education) emphasized the desire to learn more about the science of human papillomavirus (HPV) and that a positive HPV or abnormal Papanicolaou test need not mean a woman will develop cervical cancer. Both the health professionals and the focus group participants highlighted that sexual health education must start early, in schools, preferably before girls are sexually active and that it has to continue throughout life to create a screening culture with a focus on women’s well-being. Health professionals elaborated mainly on special events for community women, whereas focus group participants also recognized the need to include community men in health education particularly for destigmatizing the sexually transmitted HPV infection.

Growing Wellbeing Through Community Participatory Arts: The Anishinaabek Cervical Cancer Screening Study (ACCSS)

This chapter describes the successful use of wool felting to enhance cervical cancer screening education for Canadian Indigenous women. The Anishinaabek Cervical Cancer Screening Study is a large mixed-methods study being conducted by a multi-disciplinary team in collaboration with ten Robinson-Superior Treaty First Nations communities in northwestern Ontario, Canada, to address and ultimately improve cervical cancer screening in First Nations women. Despite significant decrease in cervical cancer deaths since the introduction of the Pap(anicolaou) test, Indigenous women in Canada have 2 to 20 times the risk of contracting cervical cancer. This chapter shares the research tenets underpinning this arts-integrated work, the outcomes of needle felting in a pilot focus group, and an artist-researcher’s learnings in creating the art pieces “Growing Wellbeing.”

Materializing the Punctum

This chapter examines the Clothesline Project at Washington State University (WSU) to better understand the experience of empowerment and resilience through empathetic poetry, found poetry, and hermeneutic qualitative inquiry. The WSU Clothesline Project is a collection of T-shirts emblazoned with personal messages that has grown to approximately 450 shirts over 15 years, from 1995 to 2011 (Robinson-Smith, personal communication, fall, 2008).