Indigenous Mental Health & Research: Recommended Texts

In Decolonizing Trauma Work, Renee Linklater explores healing and wellness in Indigenous communities on Turtle Island. Drawing on a decolonizing approach, which puts the “soul wound” of colonialism at the centre, Linklater engages ten Indigenous health care practitioners in a dialogue regarding Indigenous notions of wellness and wholistic health, critiques of psychiatry and psychiatric diagnoses, and Indigenous approaches to helping people through trauma, depression and experiences of parallel and multiple realities. Through stories and strategies that are grounded in Indigenous worldviews and embedded with cultural knowledge, Linklater offers purposeful and practical methods to help individuals and communities that have experienced trauma. Decolonizing Trauma Work, one of the first books of its kind, is a resource for education and training programs, health care practitioners, healing centres, clinical services and policy initiatives.

Now in its second edition, this collection explores how multiple health determinants, such as colonialism, gender, culture, early childhood development, the environment, geography, HIV/AIDS, medicine, and policy, impact the health status of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Grounded in expert voices of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis writers from coast to coast, this updated edition includes a chapter on environment and land defense; a foreword written by Dr. Evan Adams, Chief Medical Officer of the First Nations Health Authority; chapters by Liz Howard and Helen Knott, Indigenous poets; and an updated arrangement that reflects the significant social and political events that dominated headlines over the last two years, such as the protests at Standing Rock, North Dakota, the US national election of 2016, the Indigenous youth suicide epidemic, and the enquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls in Canada. This revolutionary book is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in courses on health, public and population health, community health sciences, medicine, nursing, and social work.

North America¿s Indigenous population is a vulnerable group, with specific psychological and healing needs that are not widely met in the mental health care system. Indigenous peoples face certain historical, cultural-linguistic and socioeconomic barriers to mental health care access that government, health care organizations and social agencies must work to overcome. This volume examines ways Indigenous healing practices can complement Western psychological service to meet the needs of Indigenous peoples through traditional cultural concepts. Bringing together leading experts in the fields of Aboriginal mental health and psychology, it provides data and models of Indigenous cultural practices in psychology that are successful with Indigenous peoples. It considers Indigenous epistemologies in applied psychology and research methodology, and informs government policy on mental health service for these populations.

Connecting modern psychology to its Indigenous roots to enhance the healing process and psychology itself. Explains how Indigenous perspectives can help create a more effective model of best practices in psychology. Explores the vital role of spirituality in the practice of psychology and the shift of emphasis that occurs when one understands that all beings are interconnected. Wherever the first inhabitants of the world gathered together, they engaged in the human concerns of community building, interpersonal relations, and spiritual understanding. As such these earliest people became our "first psychologists." Their wisdom lives on through the teachings of contemporary Indigenous elders and healers, offering unique insights and practices to help us revision the self-limiting approaches of modern psychology and enhance the processes of healing and social justice.

Indigenous peoples are vastly overrepresented in the Canadian criminal justice system. The Canadian government has framed this disproportionate victimization and criminalization as being an "Indian problem."

In The Colonial Problem, Lisa Monchalin challenges the myth of the "Indian problem" and encourages readers to view the crimes and injustices affecting Indigenous peoples from a more culturally aware position. She analyzes the consequences of assimilation policies, dishonoured treaty agreements, manipulative legislation, and systematic racism, arguing that the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian criminal justice system is not an Indian problem but a colonial one.

Aboriginal peoples in Canada have diverse cultures but share common social and political challenges that have contributed to their experiences of health and illness. This collection addresses the origins of mental health and social problems and the emergence of culturally responsive approaches to services and health promotion. Healing Traditions is not a handbook of practice but a resource for thinking critically about current issues in the mental health of indigenous peoples. Cross-cutting themes include: the impact of colonialism, sedentarization, and forced assimilation; the importance of land for indigenous identity and an ecocentric self; and processes of healing and spirituality as sources of resilience.

Describing a research paradigm shared by indigenous scholars in Canada and Australia, this study demonstrates how this standard can be put into practice. Portraying indigenous researchers as knowledge seekers who work to progress indigenous ways of being, knowing, and doing in a constantly evolving context, this examination shows how relationships both shape indigenous reality and are vital to reality itself. These same knowledge seekers develop relationships with ideas in order to achieve enlightenment in the ceremony of maintaining accountability. Envisioning researchers as accountable to all relations, this overview proves that careful choices should be made regarding selection of topics, methods of data collection, forms of analysis, and the way in which information is presented.

What are Indigenous research methodologies, and how do they unfold? Indigenous methodologies flow from tribal knowledge, and while they are allied with several western qualitative approaches, they remain distinct. These are the focal considerations of Margaret Kovach's study,which offers guidance to those conducting research in the academy using Indigenous methodologies. Kovach includes topics such as Indigenous epistemologies, decolonizing theory, story as method, situating self and culture, Indigenous methods, protocol, meaning-making, and ethics. In exploring these elements, the book interweaves perspectives from six Indigenous researchers who share their stories, and also includes excerpts from the author's own journey into Indigenous methodologies. Indigenous Methodologies is an innovative and important contribution to the emergent discourse on Indigenous research approaches and will be of use to graduate students, professors, and community-based researchers of all backgrounds - both within the academy and beyond.

'A landmark in the process of decolonizing imperial Western knowledge.' Walter Mignolo, Duke University To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being. Now in its eagerly awaited second edition, this bestselling book has been substantially revised, with new case-studies and examples and important additions on new indigenous literature, the role of research in indigenous struggles for social justice, which brings this essential volume urgently up-to-date.

The Handbook of Critical Methodologies covers everything from the history of critical and indigenous theory and how it came to inform and impact qualitative research and indigenous peoples to the critical constructs themselves, including race/diversity, gender representation (queer theory, feminism), culture, and politics to the meaning of "critical" concepts within specific disciplines (critical psychology, critical communication/mass communication, media studies, cultural studies, political economy, education, sociology, anthropology, history, etc. - all in an effort to define emancipatory research and explore what critical qualitative research can do for social change and social justice.

A new generation of indigenous researchers is taking its place in the world of social research in increasing numbers. These scholars provide new insights into communities under the research gaze and offer new ways of knowing to traditional scholarly models. They also move the research community toward more sensitive and collaborative practices. But it comes at a cost. Many in this generation have met with resistance or indifference in their journeys through the academic system and in the halls of power. They also often face ethical quandaries or even strong opposition from their own communities. The life stories in this book present the journeys of over 30 indigenous researchers from six continents and many different disciplines. They show, in their own words, the challenges, paradoxes, and oppression they have faced, their strategies for overcoming them, and how their work has produced more meaningful research and a more just society.

In the first book ever published on Indigenous quantitative methodologies, Maggie Walter and Chris Andersen open up a major new approach to research across the disciplines and applied fields. While qualitative methods have been rigorously critiqued and reformulated, the population statistics relied on by virtually all research on Indigenous peoples continue to be taken for granted as straightforward, transparent numbers. This book dismantles that persistent positivism with a forceful critique, then fills the void with a new paradigm for Indigenous quantitative methods, using concrete examples of research projects from First World Indigenous peoples in the United States, Australia, and Canada. Concise and accessible, it is an ideal supplementary text as well as a core component of the methodological toolkit for anyone conducting Indigenous research or using Indigenous population statistics.

We know that since the end of the Cold War, conflicts in non-Western countries have been frequent, frequently violent, largely intra-state, and protracted. But what do we know about conflict management and resolution strategies in these societies? Have the dominant Western approaches been transplantable, suitable, effective, durable, and sustainable? Would conflicts in non-Western societies be better handled by the adaptation and adoption of customary, traditional, or localized mechanisms of mitigation? These and similar questions have engaged the attention of scholars and policy-makers. Indigenous Conflict Management Strategies: Global Perspectives is offered as a global compendium on indigenous conflict management strategies. It presents diverse perspectives on the subject. Fully aware of the tendency in the literature to over-generalize, over-romanticize, and over-criticize the localized and customary mechanisms, the book takes a slightly different approach. It presents a variety of traditional conflict management approaches as well as several cases of the successful integration of the indigenous and Western strategies in the contemporary period. The main features, strengths, challenges, and weaknesses of a multitude of indigenous systems are also presented.

Self-determination is on the agenda of Indigenous peoples all over the world. This analysis by an Indigenous feminist scholar challenges the United Nations-based human rights agendas and colonial theory that until now have shaped Indigenous models of self-determination. Gender inequality and gender violence, Dian Million argues, are critically important elements in the process of self-determination. Million contends that nation-state relations are influenced by a theory of trauma ascendant with the rise of neoliberalism. Such use of trauma theory regarding human rights corresponds to a therapeutic narrative by Western governments negotiating with Indigenous nations as they seek self-determination. Focusing on Canada and drawing comparisons with the United States and Australia, Million brings a genealogical understanding of trauma against a historical filter. Illustrating how Indigenous people are positioned differently in Canada, Australia, and the United States in their articulation of trauma, the author particularly addresses the violence against women as a language within a greater politic. The book introduces an Indigenous feminist critique of this violence against the medicalized framework of addressing trauma and looks to the larger goals of decolonization. Noting the influence of humanitarian psychiatry, Million goes on to confront the implications of simply dismissing Indigenous healing and storytelling traditions. Therapeutic Nations is the first book to demonstrate affect and trauma's wide-ranging historical origins in an Indigenous setting, offering insights into community healing programs. The author's theoretical sophistication and original research make the book relevant across a range of disciplines as it challenges key concepts of American Indian and Indigenous studies.

When Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists work together, what are the ends that they seek, and how do they negotiate their relationships while pursuing social change? Alliances brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders, activists, and scholars in order to examine their experiences of alliance-building for Indigenous rights and self-determination and for social and environmental justice. The contributors, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, come from diverse backgrounds as community activists and academics. They write from the front lines of struggle, from spaces of reflection rooted in past experiences, and from scholarly perspectives that use emerging theories to understand contemporary instances of alliance. Some contributors reflect on methods of mental decolonization while others use Indigenous concepts of respectful relationships in order to analyze present-day interactions. Most importantly, Alliances delves into the complex political and personal relationships inherent in both Indigenous and non-Indigenous struggles for social justice to provide insights into the tensions and possibilities of Indigenous-non-Indigenous alliance and coalition-building in the early twenty-first century.

Imagine a world in which people see themselves as embedded in the natural order, with ethical responsibilities not only toward each other, but also toward rocks, trees, water and all nature. Imagine seeing yourself not as a master of Creation, but as the most humble, dependent and vulnerable part.     Rupert Ross explores this indigenous world view and the determination of indigenous thinkers to restore it to full prominence today. He comes to understand that an appreciation of this perspective is vital to understanding the destructive forces of colonization. As a former Crown Attorney in northern Ontario, Ross witnessed many of these forces. He examines them here with a special focus on residential schools and their power to destabilize entire communities long after the last school has closed. With help from many indigenous authors, he explores their emerging conviction that healing is now better described as "decolonization therapy." And the key to healing, they assert, is a return to the traditional indigenous world view.  

Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival untangles truth from some of the myths about First Nations at the same time that it addresses misconceptions still widely believed today. The second book by award-winning author Bev Sellars, Price Paid is based on a popular presentation Sellars created for treaty-makers, politicians, policymakers, and educators when she discovered they did not know the historic reasons they were at the table negotiating First Nations rights. The book begins with glimpses of foods, medicines, and cultural practices North America's indigenous peoples have contributed for worldwide benefit. It documents the dark period of regulation by racist laws during the twentieth century, and then discusses new emergence in the twenty-first century into a re-establishment of Indigenous land and resource rights. The result is a candidly told personal take on the history of a culture's fight for their rights and survival. It is Canadian history told from a First Nations point of view. Awards and recognition for Bev Sellars's They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School − 2014 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature − 2014 Burt Award for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Literature (third prize) − Shortlisted for the 2014 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (B.C. Book Prizes) − More than 40 weeks on the B.C. bestsellers list