Re-evaluting resilience.pdf - 0 views
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We seek to reformulate a concept of indigenous resilience that is not viewed as an internalised, individual attribute, but rather as the strength and power of the collective, cultural knowledge of indigenous communities
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We propose that indigenous resilience is exemplified in the persistence of cultures and collectivities, rather than as traits of individuals.
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As community psychologists, we take a critical perspective on individual focused theories of resilience
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the subsequent uptake of resilience as a positive counterbalance to the disease and social pathology model from which a great deal of research on indigenous communities has been based.
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The implication is that, for a resilient system, the perturbation leaves no lasting change. This interpretation of resilience is too static and ahistorical to capture the nature of human adaptation and development across the lifespan... [here] resilience usually does not involve simply springing back to a previous state but is a dynamic process of adjustment, adaptation, and transformation in response to challenges and demands.
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the ability to cope is often tied to individual traits that are independent and unalterable such as high intelligence and emotional competence
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The discipline of psychology also offers a socio-ecological model of human resilience that views culture, community, family and individuals as nested in various spheres of influence that affect the probability of resilience
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We propose that the psychological concept of Indigenous resilience is problematic in the context of well-established literature on colonial, collective and intergenerational trauma.
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Resilience has, however, been taken up by several indigenous scholars in an effort to shift away from a social pathology model towards a culturally appropriate strengths-based approach to Indigenous communities
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In all cases, resilience was shifted from the individual to the collective, which aligns with an ecological, systems model that involves nesting layers of individual, family and community within a cultural and political context.
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Indigenous ‘resilience/strength’ is constructed from the original instructions that are held within each Nation’s indigenous knowledge, deep within indigenous philosophies and beliefs
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Indigenous Nations commonly see these sets of beliefs, world views, ontologies, and understandings of the universe as ‘original instructions’ .
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indigenous knowledge provides a counter discourse that completes and fills in the gaps of Western knowledge(s)
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indigenous knowledge is far more than the binary opposition of Western knowledge.
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although resilience appears as a systems theory, its main effect is to emphasize the need for adaptability at the unit level
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The literature we have reviewed in traditional psychology largely frames resilience in an uncritical manner as a responsibility of indigenous individuals, families and communities with little or no attention to the external political, economic, and environmental realities of indigenous communities.
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critique resilience as a concept that facilitates the displacement of responsibility away from governments and which responsibilitises indigenous peoples for their own distress and disadvantage .
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point to colonisation as the root cause for the poor social, political, economical, and cultural health and well-being that Aboriginal communities continue to endure
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esulted in the near destruction of all indigenous knowledge systems
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The loss of this indigenous knowledge was devastating because, as the settler society dismissed indigenous ways of knowing, they denied indigenous philosophies and perspectives of knowledge and reality and supplanted them with foreign concepts of individuality, patriarchy and ownership
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The unfortunate reality, however, is that most First Nation communities in Canada continue to witness a colonial framework for their institutions of education, governance, health care, child welfare and economic development which are still under the control of the federal governmen
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revitalisation (i.e. rejection of dominant culture and subsequent, reactive romantic attachment to original culture)
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We reject the adaptive, assimilative approaches to intercultural contact that require a hiding or capitulation of culture and instead propose a transformative approach that supports revitalisation of culture in concert with social change without denigrating cultural attachment as ‘romantic
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Given the expectation for indigenous populations to ‘adapt’ to the current circumstances in order for them to be ‘resilient’ , we must acknowledge that many indigenous communities are still in fact under colonial control
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If the concept of resilience can be stretched to apply to First Nations, as I believe it can, then the best chance for success lie in the efforts of First Nations to reassert cultural sovereignty and to ResIlIeNCe 9 expand the indigenous knowledge base that has allowed them to adapt to and, in some cases, overcome the adversity
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Indigenous scholars have viewed resilience as a way of coding the strengths of people, communities and cultures against a tide of pathologising diagnoses.
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strength and endurance in the face of unremitting challenge is not to be conflated with ‘resilience’
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having to adapt to survive the ongoing cultural assault and social injustice cannot be equated as resilience at the level of the individual or the collective.
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This reinforces a ‘blame the victim’ mentality by shifting the attention away from political accountability.
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The resilience of Indigenous cultures holds the promise for indigenous peoples globally to resurge as strong cultural peoples to liberate themselves from the bonds of colonialism.
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Those communities that have held their identities largely intact, promoting connection to cultures and spirituality, continue to have better outcomes and emerge earlier from the damaging long-term impacts of colonisation
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For example, through their work with First Nations youth in British Columbia, Canada, Christopher lalonde and several of his colleagues assert that indigenous culture is the most significant protective factor to reducing Aboriginal youth suicide
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In spite of consciously realising one has agency over one’s life, many indigenous people feel as though they lack any agency whatsoever; therefore, there is much to be learned from liberation theory
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MartinBaro (1994) acknowledged that the need for change must come from within indigenous communities and proposed that the oppression that controls the lives of the oppressed has to be quelled by the indigenous peoples themselves
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oppressed people who endure these positions of oppression will suffer a more insidious position that he referred to as ‘internalized oppression’ .
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the sense of victimhood remains deeply laden in the internal consciousness of indigenous peoples
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Narratives, for example, are an important vehicle for the transmission, maintenance and reclamation of culture
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Narrative resilience therefore has a communal or collective dimension, maintained by the circulation of stories invested with cultural power and authority, which the individual and groups can use to articulate and assert their identity, affirm core values and attitudes needed to face challenges, and generate creative solutions to new predicaments
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A strategy to ensure the survival of indigenous knowledge(s) is needed.
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The knowledge contained within indigenous ontologies provides the foundations and ways of knowing indigenous reality that are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago.
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advances a deeply sceptical view of psychological and neoliberal programmes of resilience as applied to indigenous populations
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we have raised concerns about the potential of conflating indigenous concepts of strength and autonomy with responsibilising indigenous communities for their own problems and solutions in an ahistorical, apolitical manner that fails to address the ongoing culpability and accountability of states