Art and Indigenous health and well-being: Art as a means for truth and thrivance
September 2025
The arts are not only an essential aspect of wholistic health and well-being for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples, they are also a means for thrivance—a term merging notions of thriving and resistance. This report presents Indigenous artists who take up and redress significant colonial policies in their artistic practices in order to expose the truths of their harms, enact resistances, and forge new paths for community strength. The concept of thrivance describes the power of these artworks to enact resiliency against colonial policies like the Doctrine of Discovery, the Indian Act, Residential Schools, Indian Hospitals, resource extraction, and the Massey Report. By creatively taking on these policies through art, Indigenous Peoples claim the artistic sovereignty to tell their own histories in the face of persistent oppression. This truth promotes healing and new possibilities for thriving.
The report is anchored by co-author Lisa Boivin’s artwork, Our Weird Raven. Known as a trickster and survivor in many Indigenous cultures across Turtle Island, Raven uses intelligence and cunning to adapt and thrive amongst the vast changes to their environments since the arrival of settlers. This artwork, as well the others featured here, capture throughlines of colonization in ways that promote truth and reconciliation, vitalize artistic practices for well-being, and perform Indigenous knowledges that actively contribute to nation building.
View or download the report (PDF)