Indigenous Youth Voices on Relational Leadership and Guidance

This article explores how Indigenous youth understand and define leadership, challenging dominant conceptions that positions leadership as an individual trait or outcome of capacity-building. Grounded in a decolonial approach, the study draws on a year-long participatory process with the Youth Advisory Committee of the Quebec Youth Research Network Chair’s Indigenous Stream. Through dialogues, creative activities, and group reflections, youth co-created a visual ‘postcard’ that serves as both a representation and framework for Indigenous youth leadership. Findings reveal that leadership is understood as deeply relational, emerging through connections to community, culture, and land. Rather than a fixed role, leadership is described as a shared and evolving process, shaped through collective responsibility, intergenerational teachings, and everyday practices of care and action. Youth emphasize that leadership is cultivated through experiences, including navigating challenges, stepping into and out of spaces, and learning through both guidance and relationality. By centering Indigenous youth perspectives, this article highlights the importance of creating spaces that support diverse expressions of leadership and affirms the role of youth, as contributing to the collective and to decolonization.