The COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges and Needs Experienced by Indigenous People of Urban Areas

Abstract

The world was caught off guard by the swift spread of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020. For vulnerable populations such as the urban Indigenous, the first wave of the pandemic was even more challenging for multiple reasons. Many of their usual culturally safe services were interrupted, thus they found themselves struggling on different levels. Our team conducted a needs assessment to shed light on how urban Indigenous people living in the X region, in the province of Quebec, Canada, dealt with this situation and what were the most important services regarding holistic health they wished they could have relied on. To respect Indigenous culture, data collection was completed through sharing circles in addition to a web-based survey. The results indicated that participants experienced anxiety and psychological distress during the pandemic. They identified unmet needs related to family services, support in homeschooling, access to traditional medicine and spiritual and cultural practices to name a few. Future work should involve the implementation of culturally safe services, adapted to the pandemic era, for Indigenous people living in urban areas