Young Innovators: Supporting the Health and Wellbeing of Indigenous Leaders
Sheila Naytowhow’s research, inspired by the loss of her grandfather and her experiences growing up around First Nation leadership, explores how leadership impacts the holistic well-being of Indigenous leaders. Grounded in Indigenous worldviews and lived experiences, her work aims to strengthen supports for leaders, inform policy, and foster intergenerational knowledge to support healthier, more sustainable leadership in Indigenous communities.
For Sheila Naytowhow, research is deeply personal and deeply rooted in community.
Growing up surrounded by First Nation leadership, Naytowhow witnessed both the strength and the heaviness that leadership can carry. The loss of her grandfather, a determined and hardworking Chief, passionate about ensuring youth had access to sports, passed away at just 53 due to stress. This had become a turning point in how she perceived leadership and wellbeing.
“My late grandfather was a Chief in our community, and his passing had a profound impact on our family,” she reflects. “At first, my research was driven by my family’s experience, but over time it became about something bigger: supporting the health of future generations of Indigenous leaders.”
Now a graduate student at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine, Naytowhow is exploring how First Nation elected officials experience leadership, and how those experiences shape their Physical, Mental, Emotional, and spiritual well-being. Her work aims to strengthen the supports available to those who carry leadership responsibilities in their communities.
At the heart of Naytowhow’s research is a commitment to ensuring that Indigenous leaders’ voices are heard on their own terms. Rather than interpreting their experiences through external frameworks, she is developing an approach that centres Indigenous worldviews and lived realities.
“I want to understand leadership from the perspective of those living it,” she explains. “That means creating space for their stories, their knowledge, and their ways of understanding health.”
Her work adapts phenomenology, a research method focused on lived experience, but reshapes it to reflect a more holistic, culturally grounded approach. Naytowhow states, “To build my framework, I studied phenomenological philosophers of Germany and France, particularly the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I was really interested in ideas that take a more holistic approach, which includes both mind and body, to understanding the underlying meaning of an experience.” Through integrating Indigenous perspectives, Naytowhow’s research acknowledges that wellbeing is individual and relational, meaning it is connected to community, land, culture, and responsibility.
“My approach was to create a new innovative phenomenological method, one that really focuses on how a particular phenomenon affects one’s spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical health — essentially infusing it with an Indigenous worldview which, to my knowledge, hasn’t been attempted before,” said Naytowhow.
The impact of Naytowhow’s research extends beyond academia. Through documenting the realities of leadership, both the challenges and the sources of strength, her work contributes to a growing understanding of how to better support Indigenous leaders in meaningful ways.
A key component of her research involves intergenerational knowledge sharing. Participants are invited to offer guidance for future leaders, creating a bridge between past and future leadership experiences. This knowledge has the potential to better prepare Indigenous youth who may one day step into these roles.
Her research also has broader implications for policy and workplace practices, particularly in recognizing the need for holistic approaches to health and wellness. In highlighting the pressures faced by leaders and the supports they need, her work can help shape systems that are more responsive to Indigenous realities.
Naytowhow’s work has already gained recognition across Canada, with support from national and provincial health research organizations (Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF) and Saskatchewan National Network Environments for Indigenous Health Research (SK-NEIHR)). She has shared her research at national gatherings and continues to build momentum for a larger, more comprehensive study.
As Naytowhow plans to continue her research at the doctoral level, her vision remains clear: to contribute to healthier, more sustainable leadership within Indigenous communities.