For Those Who Lead Me in the Night, I Will Thank Them in the Morning

Abstract

This chapter frames my account of an indigenous psychology of resilience. I introduce propositions of the relationship-resourced resilience theory regarding flocking as pathway to resilience. I attend specifically to propositions related to structural and cultural constraints and enablers with regards to resilience. I substantiate the proposition that flocking is a consequence of structural constraints. I introduce the proposition that flocking leverages indigenous knowledge to bolster resilience, specifically relational dimensions of an interdependent culture. I introduce a discussion regarding beliefs and practices of an interdependent indigenous culture that have bearing on a resilience-enabling pathway given inequality. I explain indigenous psychology theory building as crafting a partial story. I introduce the way we built the relationship-resourced resilience theory intentionally as an indigenous theory to add this often silent knowledge base to discourses on psychology and resilience. I explain the theoretical, meta-theoretical and methodological lenses I used to build the indigenous theory. I give an overview of the case study data, from which I inductively generated a substantive theory on resilience from an indigenous perspective.