We are thrilled to share that the American Review of Canadian Studies has been awarded the Best Special Issue Award by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals for the Fall 2022 issue (Vol 52, No 3 – “Social Services, Supports, and Well-being in Arctic Canada and Beyond"). The Council of Editors of Learned Journals is an international organization of about 450 editors of scholarly journals in all disciplines and affiliated with the Modern Languages Association.
In their comments, the judges noted:
In the special issue of American Review of Canadian Studies on “Social Services, Supports and Well-being in Arctic Canada and Beyond,” community-based researchers produced eight articles exploring social services and well-being practices used by Indigenous communities in Arctic Canada; the issue is evidence of an emerging field they call “Arctic wellness."
The judges found the editorial process to be innovative and noteworthy, given the high degree of collaboration editors employed in the research and editing processes. The publication process was part of a larger 18-month project and pushed the editorial team to utilize new ideas to decolonize the peer review process and challenge scholarly practice. Reviewers especially appreciated the care taken to center Indigenous ideas about wellbeing, both in content and in practice—for example, including abstracts in English and in the dialects of Inuktitut for almost all of the articles.
This special issue provides a significant intervention in thinking about the health and wellbeing of Indigenous people in Arctic Canada, and has implications for approaches to public health and social services in Indigenous communities beyond Canada–especially in considering relationality as essential to research and practice and in drawing on Indigenous knowledges.