Native Nation Building:Creating a Foundation for Native Community Resiliency
Healthy and resilient tribal communities keep residents safe, buffer children and families against the effects of adversity and historical trauma, and are a resource for healing. History demonstrates the inherent resilience of American Indian and Alaska Native nations, tribal families, and their children. Yet history also attests to the repeated failures of U.S. policy to address the root causes of health, economic, safety, and educational concerns of American Indian and Alaska Native Peoples. These facts prompt the question, “How can Native nations, leading with tribal values and ethics, take greater control of policy design and implementation, develop a vision for the future, and intentionally build thriving tribal communities?”
Native nation building – the process by which a Native nation creates the governing capacity to make timely, strategically informed decisions about the tribe’s affairs and its future, and to implement those decisions – provides a framework for responding to this question. Through nation building, a Native nation can create an institutional foundation for self-determined responses to community needs. In particular, a Native nation can develop culturally relevant goals and strategies that mitigate trauma while also creating conditions that promote personal and community resiliency across its entire governance structure.
The resources collected here include some of the best available research and guidance on strategies for Native nation building and are intended to address some common questions about the basis for prevention and resiliency in Native communities.
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Stephen Cornell and Joseph P. Kalt. 2007. Two Approaches to the Development of Native Nations: One Works, the Other Doesn't. In Miriam Jorgensen (ed.), Rebuilding Native Nations: Strategies for Governance and Development (pp. 3-33). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Native nations that pursue nation building – those that exert their sovereignty, back it up with workable and culturally legitimate institutions, and undertake decisions with the long-term future in mind – typically have been able to achieve their development goals and help their communities thrive. While this paper discusses economic development, the nation building approach is beneficial for the realization of any community goal, including goals related to tribal citizens’ welfare, physical and mental health, housing, food security, and more. Through nation building, communities can create greater community wellbeing and socio-cultural capacity, which in turn can support healing and serve as protective factors against harm. -
What is needed to strengthen families and improve the lives of children in Native America? This research argues that sustained progress in Native family wellbeing arises when decision-making concerning families and children is Native-driven. Through Indigenous “local control,” Native nations that design and deliver their own programs, policies, and initiatives are setting the standard for community wellbeing and showing how to create the scaffolding that can strengthen Native families. In sum, this research underscores the important role of two principles of Native nation building—self-determination and cultural match—in creating strong and healthy Native communities.
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Poverty is highly correlated with child maltreatment, high rates of out-of-home care, and negative mental health and juvenile justice outcomes. Conversely, economic and community development may be viewed as prevention strategies for child abuse and neglect and as components of the support system for healthy, safe, and stable Native families. Tribal sovereignty and effective, culturally legitimate tribal institutions are the basis for sustainable Native economies. Accordingly, foundation, NGO, and government funders should invest in these determinants of change. As tribes implement new initiatives, they can measure progress using a culturally attentive “relational worldview,” which promotes balance among the environment/context, infrastructure/mind, resources/body, and mission/spirit elements of community and economic development. Put differently, the bottom line is community and family strengthening, not profit for profit’s sake.
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National Native Children’s Trauma Center Training and Technical Assistance Offerings
Trauma is a widespread, harmful, and costly public health problem, and its effects are
particularly detrimental to children and adolescents. Although many Native youth who come into contact with education, health care, first responder, child welfare, and juvenile justice systems have experienced significant psychological trauma, these systems’ different and disconnected responsibilities can forestall more thorough responses to Native children’s needs. A cross-system, trauma-informed approach could lead to earlier and more comprehensive interventions on behalf of healing. The National Native Children’s Trauma Center (NNCTC) supports tribes in the implementation of cultural and systemic solutions to trauma-related problems at the individual, family, and community levels. The NNCTC routinely engages in cross-system trauma training and support, including coordination across silos and in some cases whole-community projects. -
In the context of recovery from trauma, Indigenous health knowledge and wellness traditions gain importance and warrant attention, engagement, and support. This article describes an American Indian knowledge tradition, its association with specific indigenous healing practices, its differentiation from western therapeutic psychological knowledge, and the broader challenge posed by alternative health knowledge for community psychologists. It concludes with a strong argument in favor of “practice-based evidence” over “evidence-based practice” as a means to Native nations’ collective recovery from trauma and for Native communities’ ongoing wellbeing.