“It Felt Like Violence”: Indigenous Knowledge Traditions and the Postcolonial Ethics of Academic Inquiry and Community Engagement

In a 2014 presentation at an academic conference featuring an American Indian community audience, I critically engaged the assumptions and commitments of Indigenous Research Methodologies. These methodologies have been described as approaches and procedures for conducting research that stem from long‐subjugated Indigenous epistemologies (or “ways of knowing”). In my presentation, I described a Crow Indian religious tradition known as a skull medicine as an example of an indigenous way of knowing, referring to a historical photograph of a skull medicine bundle depicted on an accompanying slide. This occasioned consternation among many in attendance, some of whom later asserted that it was unethical for me to have presented this information because of Indigenous cultural proscriptions against publicizing sacred knowledge and photographing sacred objects. This ethical challenge depends on enduring religious sensibilities in Northern Plains Indian communities, as embedded within a postcolonial political critique concerning the accession of sacred objects by Euro‐American collectors during the early 20th century. I complicate these ethical claims by considering competing goods that are valued by community psychologists, ultimately acknowledging that the associated ethical challenge resists resolution in terms that would be acceptable to diverse constituencies.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141022/1/ajcp12183_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141022/2/ajcp12183.pd

“We Never was Happy Living Like a Whiteman” : Mental Health Disparities and the Postcolonial Predicament in American Indian Communities

In the context of increasing attention to disparities in health status between U.S. ethnoracial groups, this article examines the dilemma of divergent cultural practices for redressing disparities in mental health status in American Indian communities. Drawing upon an ethnographic interview with a tribal elder from a northern Plains Indian reservation, a prototypical discourse of distress is presented and analyzed as one exemplar of the divergence between the culture of the clinic and the culture of the community. Situated in the context of continuing power asymmetries between tribal nations and the U.S. federal government, the implications of this cultural divergence for the efforts of mental health professionals, practitioners, and policymakers are identified as a predicament that only the conventions and commitments of a robust community psychology have the potential to resolve.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117068/1/ajcp9136.pd

The Red Road to Wellness: Cultural Reclamation in a Native First Nations Community Treatment Center

This article explores how Native American cultural practices were incorporated into the therapeutic activities of a community‐controlled substance abuse treatment center on a “First Nations” reserve in the Canadian north. Analysis of open‐ended interviews with nineteen staff and clients—as contextualized by participant observation, program records, and existing ethnographic resources—yielded insights concerning local therapeutic practice with outpatients and other community members. Specifically, program staff adopted and promoted a diverse array of both western and Aboriginal approaches that were formally integrated with reference to the Aboriginal symbol of the medicine wheel. Although incorporations of indigenous culture marked Lodge programs as distinctively Aboriginal in character, the subtle but profound influence of western “therapy culture” was centrally evident in healing activities as well. Nuanced explication of these activities illustrated four contributions of cultural analysis for community psychology.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117057/1/ajcp9373.pd

Dialogue 2008

In the wake of European settler-colonialism, the indigenous peoples of North America still contend with the social and psychological sequelae of cultural devastation, forced assimilation, social marginality, enduring discrimination, and material poverty within their respective nation-states. In response to this contemporary legacy of conquest and colonization, a cottage industry devoted to the surveillance and management of the “mental health” problems of Native Americans proliferates in the United States and Canada without abatement. The attention of clinically concerned researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to an indigenous “patient” or “client” base, however, invites critical analysis of the cultural politics of mental health in these contexts. More specifically, the possibility that conventional clinical approaches harbor the ideological danger of implicit Western cultural proselytization has been underappreciated. In this special section of Ethos , three investigators engage the provocative cultural politics of mental health discourse and practice in three diverse Native American communities. Each provides a critical analysis of mental health discourse and practice in their respective research settings, collectively comprising an analytical and political subversion of the potentially totalizing effects of authorized, universalist mental health policy and practice. [mental health, American Indians, psychiatric anthropology, cross-cultural counseling, postcolonialism]Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72110/1/j.1548-1352.2008.00016.x.pd

Research Reservations: Response and Responsibility in an American Indian Community

Community action research among the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes of the Fort Belknap Indian reservation in Montana was undertaken to identify the cultural grounds for innovative mental health service delivery. As an enrolled tribal member investigating these matters in my “home” community, however, I encountered a series of challenges and limitations emerging from respondent reservations about sharing personal experiences of difficulty and distress, and the perceived means for redressing these. Focusing upon a difficult interview with a knowledgeable tribal elder, I enlist sociolinguistic analysis—the study of communicative norms governing who talks with whom about what (and under which conditions)—as one crucial means to making sense of this complex research encounter. Similar analyses would seem necessary to ensuring the cultural validity of research conclusions in cross‐cultural action research more generally.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116959/1/ajcp9047.pd

American Indian Historical Trauma: Community Perspectives from Two Great Plains Medicine Men

The field of community psychology has long been interested in the relations between how community problems are defined, what interventions are developed in response, and to what degree power is distributed as a result. Tensions around these issues have come to the fore in debates over the influence of historical trauma (HT) in American Indian (AI) communities. After interviewing the two most influential medicine men on a Great Plains reservation to investigate how these tensions were being resolved, we found that both respondents were engaging with their own unique elaboration of HT theory. The first, George, engaged in a therapeutic discourse that reconfigured HT as a recognizable but malleable term that could help to communicate his “spiritual perspective” on distress and the need for healing in the reservation community. The second, Henry, engaged in a nation‐building discourse that shifted attention away from past colonial military violence toward ongoing systemic oppression and the need for sociostructural change. These two interviews located HT at the heart of important tensions between globalization and indigeneity while opening the door for constructive but critical reflection within AI communities, as well as dialogue with allied social scientists, to consider how emerging discourses surrounding behavioral health disparities might be helpful for promoting healing and/or sociostructural change.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117141/1/ajcp9671.pd

ADVANCING CULTURAL-CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY: REFLECTIONS ON THE SPECIAL ISSUE

the articles in this special issue of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology together comprise an initial foray into the domain of cultural-clinical psychology as recently reformulated by ryder, Ban, and Chentsova-dutton (2011). this generative reformulation accentuated the conceptual importance of construing the relationship between psychology and culture as one of mutual constitution. Moreover, this framework of mutual constitution was extended beyond culture and mind to incorporate the brain into a synthesis of culture-mind-brain that functions as a unitary dynamic multilevel system. the articles in this special issue embrace this expansive vision of cultural-clinical psychology and afford complex and nuanced insights as a result. Nevertheless, the future success of this endeavor will require broad inclusion of psychological researchers and research approaches well beyond the traditions of cultural inquiry in social psychology if the promise of a reformulated cultural-clinical psychology is to be realized. As a clinically-trained cultural psychologist who engages in methodologically diverse inquiry into American Indian mental health issues, I am struck by the historical endurance of particular professional quandaries at the intersection of clinical practice and cultural difference. For example, more than six decades ago George De

A Gathering of Native American Healers: Exploring the Interface of Indigenous Tradition and Professional Practice

This article reports insights from a 4‐day Gathering of Native American Healers at the University of Michigan in October of 2010. This event convened 18 traditional healers, clinically trained service providers, and cross‐cultural mental health researchers for a structured group dialogue to advance professional knowledge about the integration of Indigenous healing practices and conventional mental health treatments in community‐based mental health services for Native Americans. Our thematic analysis of transcripts from five Roundtable sessions afforded several key insights and understandings pertaining to the integration of Indigenous healing and conventional mental health services. First, with reference to traditional healing, the importance of a rampant relationality, various personal qualities, Indigenous spirituality, and maintenance of traditional life and culture were accentuated by Roundtable participants. Second, for traditional healers to practice effectively, Roundtable participants posited that these individuals must maintain personal wellness, cultivate profound knowledge of healing practices, recognize the intrinsic healing potential within all human beings, and work for the community rather than themselves. In speaking to the possibilities and challenges of collaboration between Indigenous and conventional biomedical therapeutic approaches, Roundtable participants recommended the implementation of cultural programming, the observance of mutuality and respect, the importance of clear and honest communication, and the need for awareness of cultural differences as unique challenges that must be collaboratively overcome.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116300/1/ajcp9747.pd

Beyond Anxious Predisposition: Do Padecer de Nervios and Ataque de Nervios Add Incremental Validity to Predictions of Current Distress among Mexican Mothers?

Background Nervios (PNRV) and ataque de nervios (ATQ) are culture-bound syndromes with overlapping symptoms of anxiety, depression, and dissociation, shown to have inconsistent associations to psychiatric disorder. Few studies test the basic assumption that PNRV and ATQ are uniformly linked to distress outcomes across Latina/o immigrant groups. This study examined: (a) the extent to which acculturative stress, Latino/US American acculturation, and anxious predisposition were associated with lifetime history of ATQ and PNRV, and (b) the extent to which ATQ and PNRV add incremental validity in explaining acculturative stress and psychological distress beyond measures of anxious predisposition. Method Participants (n = 82) included Mexican mothers who completed surveys on acculturation, trait anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, lifetime ATQ/PNRV, psychological distress, and acculturative stress. Results Lifetime PNRV, but not lifetime ATQ, was significantly predictive of psychological distress. PNRV was also linked to trait anxiety. Psychometric measures of anxious predisposition (trait anxiety and anxiety sensitivity) were more robust predictors of distress outcomes than lifetime history of ATQ/PNRV. Conclusion Inquiry into lifetime history of nervios may be a useful point of entry in talking to Mexican immigrant mothers about stress and distress. However, standard tools for assessing anxiety sensitivity and trait anxiety appear most useful in identifying and explaining the presence of psychological distress. Further research is needed to determine the cross-cultural relevance of trait anxiety and anxiety sensitivity, and its implications for the development of anxiety treatments that are effective across cultures

Urban American Indian Community Perspectives on Resources and Challenges for Youth Suicide Prevention

American Indian (AI) youth have some of the highest rates of suicide of any group in the United States, and the majority of AI youth live in urban areas away from tribal communities. As such, understanding the resources available for suicide prevention among urban AI youth is critical, as is understanding the challenges involved in accessing such resources. Pre‐existing interview data from 15 self‐identified AI community members and staff from an Urban Indian Health Organization were examined to understand existing resources for urban AI youth suicide prevention, as well as related challenges. A thematic analysis was undertaken, resulting in three principal themes around suicide prevention: formal resources, informal resources, and community values and beliefs. Formal resources that meet the needs of AI youth were viewed as largely inaccessible or nonexistent, and youth were seen as more likely to seek help from informal sources. Community values of mutual support were thought to reinforce available informal supports. However, challenges arose in terms of the community’s knowledge of and views on discussing suicide, as well as the perceived fit between community values and beliefs and formal prevention models.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134173/1/ajcp12080.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134173/2/ajcp12080_am.pd