“You can smell it before you see it, a sweetgrass meadow on a summer day. The scent flickers on the breeze, you sniff like a dog on a scent, and then it’s gone, replaced by the boggy tang of wet ground. And then it’s back, the sweet vanilla fragrance, beckoning.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer
For the Thanksgiving holiday, families and communities celebrated by coming together and acknowledging what they are grateful for. Not everyone celebrates the holiday the same way, however. For some First Nation families, “memories of genocide, colonialism, and historical trauma supersede its associations with peace, harmony, and understanding.”
As I write this, I sit on Cherokee land. I don’t share lived experience with indigenous people, however I do want to elevate information about healthcare disparities in minority groups. One step that I can take here is to elevate the voices of those who have lived this experience, and as such I would like to offer several resources for learning more about what it is like to live in the United States as a native person, as well as questions for consideration to support interacting with indigenous populations from a place of cultural humility.
As Michael Oldani and Deidre Prosen write, “Addressing intergenerational trauma and healthcare disparities remains a priority when working with First Nation communities.” The term healthcare disparity refers to differences in prevalence of diseases that are associated with differences in lived experience. As the Centers for Disease Control state, “Despite prevention efforts, some groups of people are affected by HIV, viral hepatitis, STDs, and TB more than other groups of people. The occurrence of these diseases at greater levels among certain population groups more than among others is often referred to as a health disparity. Differences may occur by gender, race or ethnicity, education, income, disability, geographic location and sexual orientation, among others. Social determinants of health like poverty, unequal access to health care, lack of education, stigma, and racism are linked to health disparities.”
In a speech entitled “Native behavioral health during COVID-19,” Dr. Roger Dale Walker, director of the One Sky Center, outlined the disparities in morbidity that affected American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations even before the pandemic. He gave the speech in 2020, at at that time cited that compared to the general population in the United States, AI/AN individuals have a:
sixfold higher risk of Alcohol Use Disorder
sixfold higher risk of tuberculosis
3.5 times higher risk of diabetes
threefold higher risk of depression
twofold higher risk of suicide.
Oldani and Prosen go on to acknowledge, “Over the course of the last century, anthropologists and mental health experts have seen their roles evolve when working with and within First Nation communities (used interchangeably with all Indigenous peoples) in North America. Psychiatrists, who were initially part of the colonial apparatus and diagnosed mental illnesses using first Freudian and then Western-based biomedical categories, were often complicit in removing Native peoples from their homes and aiding in their institutionalization at boarding schools and asylums.” As noted by Ella Greene-Morton and Meredith Minkler, it was not until 1998 that pediatricians and public health practitioners Melanie Tervalon and Jann Murray-Garcia introduced the concept of cultural humility, which they defined as “a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and critique, to redressing power imbalances … and to developing mutually beneficial and non-paternalistic partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and defined populations.” Since that time, trainings in cultural humility have increased in both the medical and mental health field, and yet - as the continued presence of healthcare disparities shows - we still have work to do.
Today, you can take a step to acknowledge the incredible resilience of indigenous people and assist in addressing inequity from a place of humility, by engaging in any/all of the following:
Take time to watch this video, by Place Matters Oregon
Take a moment to listen to an episode of People of Color in Psychology podcast. The episode which aired on 11/16/2023 specifically focused on Culturally Responsive care with Native American populations.
Read a book such as Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, to learn more about indigenous ways of life.
Consider donating to an organization such as the Native American Rights Fund, or one of the others listed in this article.
Read any of the articles cited in this post, and/or share this post with others.
Take a moment to reflect and journal regarding the following questions:
What First Nations people used to live in the area where I now live? (For assistance, check out The Smithsonian’s Interactive Map)
When and how have I interacted with First Nations people in my life?
What are three things I have learned about native people in my life? How do these things acknowledge or ignore the reality of traumatic experiences for this population?
What does cultural humility mean and look like, to me?
Perhaps this year, Thanksgiving can include as much giving as it does thanks; perhaps your learning will even extend beyond this time of year. Happy holiday season. May you celebrate wisely, and take good care.
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