Modelling cultural embeddedness for colonised indigenous minorities: The implicit and explicit pathways to culturally valued behaviours

Abstract

Colonised indigenous minorities around the world are constantly navigating the complex space between their heritage culture and mainstream society. In this paper, we explore how embeddedness in heritage cultural values, beliefs, and practises influence the behaviours of indigenous minorities, particularly during intercultural contact with the post-colonial majority where values, beliefs, and practises often clash. To support our theorising, we introduce the concept of cultural embeddedness, relating to enculturation in one’s heritage cultural values, beliefs, and practises. We then introduce the Dual-Pathways Model of Embeddedness to Culturally Valued Behaviours for Indigenous Minorities (DPM), which seeks to outline the two separate but interrelated pathways through which cultural embeddedness leads to culturally valued behaviours. The dual pathways include an implicit pathway, which begins with cultural values, and an explicit pathway, which begins with cultural practises. We use an indigenous approach, drawing on the first author’s experiences as an indigenous Māori in New Zealand to illustrate the concepts of the DPM. The model attempts to integrate the various ways in which cultural identity has been defined by indigenous authors into a single theory. We invite future qualitative and quantitative research, especially by indigenous scholars, to challenge and/or validate the DPM.