Feminist mentoring in community-based participatory action research

This paper offers an example of feminist mentorship in community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) within a rural tribal community in the Northern Great Plains of the United States. The broader initiative in which this internship work is embedded focuses on ending sexual violence within Indigenous communities. We offer an internship to train scholars committed to sexual violence prevention working with students across several colleges/universities, including Indigenous students attending tribal colleges. We share our feminist mentoring approach within this context, which attends to several feminist values, including representation, collaboration, relationships, power-sharing, empowerment, and research for social change. We discuss challenges experienced in implementing feminist mentorship and strategies to address them. This paper offers insights into how our mentorship promotes equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging across multiple social positions. Implications include advancing the application of feminist theories to community-based health research and providing a model of feminist mentorship in CBPAR within an Indigenous community and in health disparity and prevention research. We argue for and demonstrate the value of feminist mentorship in CBPAR to sustain social justice work through practices designed to foster spaces for emerging scholars to share their experiences, grow in their relationships, and make meaning together.