TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT FOR THE WAY THAT WE ARE: COMMUNITY BASED HOLISTIC INDIGENOUS ELDER ENGAGEMENT

AGE-WELL NCE is a Canadian centre of excellence dedicated to improving quality of life for older adults. The Rural/Remote and Indigenous Technology Needs Exploration (RRITE) is a multisite AGE-WELL project with research sites in Saskatchewan and Ontario, Canada. The Indigenous research explores how older Indigenous adults with dementia might be supported, through technology, to age in place. Using a combination of Indigenous research methodologies and community-based participatory action research, the research teams work continually, from proposal to dissemination, with community advisory groups to develop, direct and refine the research process. Advisory groups are composed of health care providers and Indigenous people with lived experience, as well as Elders. This multisite study considers qualitative data from focus groups and interviews with older Indigenous adults, their family members, care providers, and natural helpers from First Nations communities in Ontario and Saskatchewan. This paper presents the results related to technology needs, the accessibility of assistive technology within Indigenous communities, and the role technology may have in fulfilling the health and social needs of older Indigenous adults in Ontario and Saskatchewan. Understanding the unique needs of Indigenous older adults and their communities can lead to the development of culturally safe and appropriate cognitively assistive technology, which can greatly add to the literature on prevalence and perceptions of assistive technology use by Indigenous people.