O'Leary, Rieley Marie2025-10-302025-10-302025-10-30http://hdl.handle.net/10393/50990https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-31481School attendance is essential to the biopsychosocial development of youth. Consequently, frequent interruptions to school attendance places a youth's academic achievement, mental and physical health at risk. Within existing Canadian literature, there is a significant dearth of research exploring attendance among Indigenous student populations. Further, existing conceptualizations to attendance primarily consider research that comes from Western colonial perspectives, leaving a further gap in developing culturally inclusive interventions for attendance. Indigenous peoples have resisted through long-standing historical injustices and deficit research approaches within Western colonial educational systems. Their perspectives are crucial to exploring, diversifying and furthering our understandings of attendance issues in Canada. This case study sought to contribute towards literature incorporating Indigenous views of attendance. I, in partnership with an Inuit non-profit organization explored conceptualizations of attendance through a sample of educators in a culturally sensitive learning program for urban Inuit youth. The data was primarily collected through a sharing circle and from my experiences conducting this research and volunteering within this learning program. A thematic analysis, guided by Indigenous and Inuit frameworks, identified that the educator's viewed attendance as holistic and relational and used strengths-based approaches when working with their students and families. Three main themes were created to summarize the educator's conceptualization and approaches to addressing attendance within their program: a) Recognizing Barriers to Attendance b) Sense of Community and c) Representing Students. The culturally sensitive aspects of their program were also identified as contributing towards positive attendance for their students. Our discussion highlights how these findings connect to existing factors related to student attendance; emphasizing the significance of cultural inclusivity and recommending holistic models of attendance that reflect responsible practices for working with Inuit youth.enSchool Attendance ProblemsInuit QaujimajatuqangitIndigenous EducationInuit Student SuccessCulturally Sensitive PedagogyThesis