Another implication of this dissertation is the importance of cultivating spaces that work to reduce harm rather than promise safety. Across the study, Indigenous, Black, and racialized young people shared about how difficult it can be to feel safe within institutional spaces, many of which are shaped by surveillance, discipline, and unequal distribution of power. Under these conditions, trust cannot be assumed, nor can safety be declared. In fact, claiming a space is safe can hide the realities that make safety difficult for some people and more accessible to others. Safety is not experienced equally, making the promise of safety an impossible task. Instead, one of the most important questions adults can ask is: who feels safe in this space, who does not, and why? Asking this question requires attention to how harm is already present within institutional spaces and how it is experienced differently across relations of power.

From this perspective, the goal is not to promise safety, but to acknowledge that harm is often already present in the structures, policies, and relationships that organize the space. The work then becomes asking how those conditions might be reorganized through shared commitments to accountability, care, and collective responsibility. This requires identifying sources of harm and taking responsibility for reducing them together. Young people in this study offered important guidance on what this work might look like. They consistently described less harmful spaces as those that made room for slowness, creativity, relation, and connection to lands and waters. They valued environments where they were not required to perform grief, explain themselves, or move toward resolution before they were ready. They also emphasized the importance of practicing good relations through listening carefully, respecting boundaries, honouring refusal, making room for silence, and understanding care as a collective responsibility rather than an individual accommodation.