Indigenous Cancer Survivors in Peer Education and Community Knowledge Exchange: A Scoping Review

Indigenous people affected by cancer often encounter services that do not reflect their languages, relationships, knowledge systems, or community priorities. Survivor narratives are used in cancer education, yet the educational work undertaken by survivors has not been mapped. This scoping review examined the roles, formats, reported outcomes, and conditions shaping implementation when Indigenous cancer survivors participated in peer education and community knowledge exchange. Following Joanna Briggs Institute guidance and the reporting guideline for scoping reviews, six databases were searched from inception through July 2026. Twenty-one reports published between 2005 and 2026 were included. Survivor knowledge moved in three overlapping directions: between survivors through reciprocal support, outward to communities through education and storytelling, and toward organizations through co-design, navigation, advocacy, and service learning. Survivors served as peer educators, storytellers, advisors, advocates, resource co-creators, and knowledge stewards. Their activities produced peer sessions, performances, videos, digital stories, service priorities, navigation guidance, and community archives. Program evaluations reported cancer learning, greater comfort discussing cancer, reduced treatment anxiety, increased confidence sharing information, information seeking, and higher screening intention. Other reports described feeling less alone, healing and affirmation, culturally safer engagement, community-defined priorities, and survivor or community control over the representation and circulation of stories. Resourcing survivor leadership may strengthen cancer education while protecting reciprocity, cultural authority, and community control.