Indigenous Cultural Identity Research Articles

Indigenous Cultural Identity of Research Authors Standard: research and reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples in rural health journals.

The Indigenous Cultural Identity of Research Authors Standard (ICIRAS) is based on a gap in research publishing practice where Indigenous peoples' identity is not systematically and rigorously recognised in rural health research publications. There are widespread reforms, in different research areas, to counter the reputation of scientific research as a vehicle of racism and discrimination. Reflecting on these broader movements, the editorial teams of three rural health journals - Rural and Remote Health, the Australian Journal of Rural Health, and the Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine - adopted a policy of 'Nothing about Indigenous Peoples, without Indigenous Peoples'. This meant changing practices so that Indigenous Peoples' identity could be embedded in authorship credentials - such as in the byline. An environmental scan of literature about the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in research revealed many ways in which editorial boards of journals could improve their process to signal to readers that Indigenous voices are included in rural health research publication governance. Improving the health and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples worldwide requires high-quality research evidence. This quality benchmark needs to explicitly signal the inclusion of Indigenous authors. The ICIRAS is a call to action for research journals and institutions to rigorously improve research governance and leadership to amplify the cultural identity of Indigenous peoples in rural health research.

ICIRAS: Research and reconciliation with indigenous peoples in rural health journals.

AimWe aim to promote discussion about an Indigenous Cultural Identity of Research Authors Standard (ICIRAS) for academic journal publications.ContextThis is based on a gap in research publishing practice where Indigenous peoples' identity is not systematically and rigorously flagged in rural health research publications. There are widespread reforms, in different research areas, to counter the reputation of scientific research as a vehicle of racism and discrimination against the world's Indigenous peoples. Reflecting on these broader movements, the editorial teams of three rural health journals—the Australian Journal of Rural Health, the Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine, and Rural and Remote Health—recognised that Indigenous peoples' identity could be embedded in authorship details.ApproachAn environmental scan (through a cultural safety lens where Indigenous cultural authority is respected, valued, and empowered) of literature was undertaken to detect the signs of inclusion of Indigenous peoples in research. This revealed many ways in which editorial boards of Journals could systematically improve their process so that there is ‘nothing about Indigenous people, without Indigenous people’ in rural health research publications.ConclusionImproving the health and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples worldwide requires high quality research evidence. The philosophy of cultural safety supports the purposeful positioning of Indigenous peoples within the kaleidoscope of cultural knowledges as identified contributors and authors of research evidence. The ICIRAS is a call‐to‐action for research journals and institutions to rigorously improve publication governance that signals “Editing with IndigenUs and for IndigenUs”.

Narratives of Hegemony: A Critical Analysis of Dissidence in Sah's “Jayath” and Theeng's “Yambunera”

Nepal incorporates a long history of exploitation, mistreatment and marginalization of indigenous communities, including the Tamangs and the Madhesis. Throughout its history, the Hindu-based state has held power and taken control over the ethnic communities via the mainstream culture, language and the idea of homogenous national identity, which consistently rejects multiple indigenous cultural identities and voices. In this regard, the paper critically analyzes narratives of hegemony, namely, structural domination as well as the resistance of marginal community portrayed in Nepali stories “Jayath” ("A Wooden Pole") and “Yambunera” ("The Outskirts of Kathmandu") written by Shyam Sah and Bina Theeng respectively. Both stories deal with the issues of cultural hegemony and the dissenting voice of the marginalized characters that challenge the structural power. The paper also argues that despite being continuously suppressed, the marginalized community musters strength to raise their voice against the power blocs. To analyze the systematic outcast of peripheral community and their resistance, I have employed Michel Foucault’s concept of institutional power and Susan Seymour’s idea of resistance as theoretical backing.

The center for regional and tribal child welfare studies: Students’ experiences of an Anishinaabe-centered social work education program

The dramatic over removal of Indigenous children in North American governmental child welfare systems remains one of the most important and neglected issues facing Tribal Nations, child welfare policymakers and practitioners today. This paper is the second in a series of three papers (Authors 2019, 2020) presenting an ethnographic study of the Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies in the Department of Social Work, University of Minnesota – Duluth, a child welfare education program grounded in an Anishinaabe knowledge and worldview. This paper focuses on the experiences of 8 student alums and the transformation of their cultural and professional identities and impact on their social work practice through their involvement at the Center. Broadly, students described similar experiences in the transformation of their cultural identities, as Indigenous or white people, and professional identities as social workers as a result of : 1) the Center’s supportive environment that allowed them to let down their guards and learn emotionally painful child welfare history; 2) relationships established with Indigenous and non-Indigenous role models and tribal elders who provided meaningful mentorship; 3) Anishinaabe knowledge, culture, language and spirituality that decentered Eurocentrism in social work; and 4) exposure to accurate U.S. history and child welfare policy vis-à-vis Indigenous peoples. Indigenous students described unique experiences: strengthening of their Indigenous cultural identities, healing from historical trauma, and support in practicing decolonized, Anishinaabe-centered child welfare practice. White students described unique opportunities to address what it means to be “white” within a settler-colonial system, moving past shame when learning about U.S. history and child welfare policy, and addressing their own culturally based assumptions in their practice.

Indigenous Trans-Systemic Research Approach

Indigenous trans-systemic approach is a lifelong unlearning and relearning process, with no endpoint. Indigenous peoples have long called for decolonizing minds so as to support self-determination, challenge colonial practices, and value Indigenous cultural identity and pride in being Indigenous peoples. Indigenous trans-systemic approach is also a political standpoint toward valuing and revitalizing Indigenous knowledge and methodologies while weeding out colonizer biases or assumptions that have impacted Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being. Drawing from Indigenous Participatory Action Research (IPAR), I explained how I learned the meanings of trans-systematic knowledge from Indigenous Elders and Knowledge-keepers.

Indigenous cultural identity of research authors standard: Research and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in rural health journals.

Indigenous cultural identity of research authors standard: Research and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in rural health journals.

Adventism and Minahasan Culinary Identity

The debate between the culture and religion in Minahasa invites attention. The culture considers the existence of religion as a threat and potentially could destroy indigenous cultural identity. On the flip side, the religion regards cultural activities as an ancient legacy that bears no significance to theological worldview and modern civilization. Adventism, a Protestant denomination that shares extra attention to food doctrine, performs inhospitality toward Minahasan culinary identity. Engagement to consuming animal’s flesh, and even extreme food such as pork, rat, bat, dog, cat, spices ingredients, cap tikus, and related festivals that involves potluck, however, against Adventist teaching. Therefore, this essay conducts exploration to grasp how Adventism teaching could perform hospitality toward Minahasan culinary identity. This research occupies a qualitative approach and equips journals, books, and other references to contribute to the tension. In conclusion, Adventism should define the culture as a social bonding and expression of Minahasa. Minahasan culinary identity is not a theological or religious concern; instead, it should be defined as a sociology reflection. By doing so, Adventism will able to perform hospitality toward the culture.

The Hummingbird House: Indigenous Pedagogies and Cultural Revitalization in Quito, Ecuador

This article analyzes the effectiveness of public pedagogical practices underpinning urban Indigenous cultural identity, recognition, and historical awareness carried out by four generations of people who are members of the Indigenous organization Casa Kinde, located in northwestern Quito, Ecuador. I argue that these practices create a definition of Indigeneity not dependent upon territory and language but rather on practices of enactment, intention, and revitalization.

Local-Indigenous Autonomy and Community Streetscape Enhancement: Learnings from Māori and Te Ara Mua-Future Streets Project.

In settler countries, attention is now extending to the wellbeing benefits of recognising and promoting the Indigenous cultural identity of neighbourhoods as a contributing factor to more equitable and healthier communities. Re-indigenisation efforts to (re)implement cultural factors into urban design can be challenging and ineffective without the leadership and collaboration of local-Indigenous peoples. Undertaken in Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Ara Mua — Future Street project, demonstrated that co-design has critical potential in the reclamation of Indigenous autonomy, increased local-Indigenous presence and revitalisation of cultural identity. Employing a Kaupapa Māori (Māori-centred) research approach, we focused on the workings and perspectives of mana whenua (local-Indigenous peoples) and community stakeholder engagement in Te Ara Mua. An Indigenous theoretical framework, Te Pae Mahutonga, was utilised in the data analysis to explore perspectives of Indigenous collective agency, empowerment, and wellbeing. Our research demonstrates that developing capacity amongst Indigenous communities is integral for effective engagement and that the realisation of autonomy in urban design projects has broader implications for Indigenous sovereignty, spatial justice and health equity. Significantly, we argue that future community enhancement strategies must include not only re-designing and re-imagining initiatives, but also re-indigenising.

Indigenous peoples’ attitudes and social acceptability of invasive species control in New Zealand

Context In Aotearoa New Zealand, a significant threat to biodiversity, conservation efforts and Indigenous cultural identity is the unwanted introduction of invasive pests, plants and pathogens. Currently methods to control invasive species in Aotearoa New Zealand, in particular mammalian pests (i.e. possums (Trichosurus vulpecula)) have had decreasing public support. This has likely come about for a number of reasons, including lack of social engagement and concerns over impacts combined with an increasing distrust of top-down initiatives. Aims and methods We analysed opinions towards existing and emerging technologies to manage invasive species. Data were obtained from 1015 respondents who identified as Indigenous Māori from a national survey of 8199 respondents. Utilising psychological frameworks to investigate underlying beliefs of social acceptance, we analysed the responses using exploratory and latent class analysis methods to summarise the main perspectives. Key results Our results revealed four distinct clusters of viewpoints amongwithin Māori respondents that were explained by known (objective) and subjective scientific knowledge around pest control methods, and Indigenous community wellbeing. We also observed a general neutrality in trust towards science, but more trust in scientists than science institutions. Conclusions and implications Understanding the underlying values and viewpoints associated with pest control and including these in developing engagement plans will ensure a responsible process that empowers Māori. This way forward is key to sustain pathways of engagement and positive participation in decision-making.

De Caminha a Zé Carioca: invisibilidade, apagamento e silenciamento da identidade cultural indígena

Este artigo objetiva compreender, por meio de um estudo comparativo, como a identidade cultural indígena é representada nas narrativas apresentadas na Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha e na revista em quadrinhos Especial Brasil 500 Anos − Zé Carioca, à luz de estudos antropológicos sobre identidade e processos culturais. Compreende-se que a revista é quase que uma ilustração contemporânea da carta de Caminha, uma vez que ambos retratam as diferenças culturais que há entre os povos indígenas e portugueses, representando a imagem do colonizador com fortes princípios morais, religiosos e de dominação, em oposição à imagem do nativo atrasado, sem cultura e ambição, estagnado no tempo à espera de quem explorasse seus recursos e potencialidades. As narrativas, textual e imagética, criam estereótipos que contribuem para a situação de invisibilidade, apagamento e silenciamento da identidade cultural indígena, sobretudo ao depreciá-la diante da cultura eurocêntrica do colonizador.

The Visual Representation of Indigenous Cultural Identities in Australian and New Zealand Tourism Campaigns

To satisfy the desire of wealthy tourists for “exotic” locales and “unspoiled” scenery, some Australian and New Zealand organizations engage in exploiting Indigenous cultural capital and heritage. This article examines promotional video material from national tourism campaigns available on YouTube, including the Australian campaign Where the Bloody Hell Are You?, and Qantas and Air New Zealand safety videos and advertising. The analysis of textual and visual imagery demonstrates how national tourism agents utilize Indigenous cultural forms for commercial purposes, which results in cultural exploitation and expropriation as well as creation of inferior identities of Indigenous people. The study contributes to deconstructing current neocolonial models of (mis)representation of Indigenous minorities to promote emancipatory discourses about their identities.

The Health of Indigenous Populations in South Asia: A Critical Review in a Critical Time.

Despite South Asia's promising social inclusion processes, staggering social and health inequalities leave indigenous populations largely excluded. Marginalization in the South Asian polity, unequal power relations, and poor policy responses deter Adivasi populations' rights and opportunities for health gains and dignity. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is likely to result in a disproportionate share of infections and deaths among the Adivasis, given poor social conditions and exclusions. Poor health of indigenous people, inequalities between indigenous and non-indigenous groups, and failures in enforcing constitutional and legal provisions to reclaim indigenous land and cultural identity herald deeper structural and political fractures. This article unravels health inequalities between the Adivasis and non-Adivasi populations in their social context based on a critical review of secondary sources. We call for intersectoral policies and integrated health care services to address systemic inequalities, discrimination, power asymmetries, and consequent poor health outcomes. The current COVID-19 pandemic should be viewed as a window to pursue real change.

Revealing and Revelling in the Floods on Country: Memory Poles within Toonooba

Revealing and Revelling in the Floods on Country: Memory Poles within Toonooba

Ancestral Cartography: Trans-Pacific Interchanges and Okinawan Indigeneity

This article examines how Okinawan Indigenous identity is influenced by “minor” Trans-Pacific interchanges between the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement and Native American discourses on Indigeneity. Drawing from interviews with fellow Okinawan diaspora artist Denise Uyehara, the author explores their parallel responses as fourth generation Okinawan Americans to the recent resurgence of Okinawan Indigenous cultural history, practice, and identity. Uyehara’s collaboration with Native American artists in the performance Archipelago (2012) with Adam Cooper-Terán (Yaqui/Chicano), Ancestral Cartographic Rituals (2017) in collaboration with the late Payómkawichum, Ipi, and Mexican-American artist James Luna (1950–2018), and the immersive theatre project Shooting Columbus (2017) collaboration with The Fifth World Collective, is put into conversation with Kina’s painting series Sugar and Blue Hawai‘i (2010–2013) about Hawaiian sugar plantations and her trilingual illustrated children’s book Okinawan Princess: Da Legend of Hajichi Tattoos (Bess Press, 2019) written by Hawai‘i Creole author Lee A. Tonouchi.

La Cultura Cura: An Exploration of Enculturation in a Community-Based Culture-Centered HIV Prevention Curriculum for Indigenous Youth

Community based participatory research and attention to cultural resilience is recommended in HIV prevention research with Indigenous communities. This paper presents qualitative findings from evaluation of a culture-centered HIV prevention curriculum for Indigenous youth that was developed using a community based participatory research approach. Specifically, the authors focus on youth descriptions of cultural resilience and enculturation factors after participating in the curriculum. Thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with 23 youth participants yields three salient themes associated with cultural resilience and enculturation factors including: Development of cultural pride, honoring ancestors through traditional cultural practices, and acknowledging resilience and resistance within Indigenous communities. Additionally, per community directive, the authors share an observation of changes to identity descriptions from pre-curriculum baseline to post-curriculum interviews, pointing to a possible increase in awareness of Indigenous cultural identity.

African and Chinese Counter-Colonial Fictional Narratives: A Comparative Study of the Retrieval of Indigenous Cultural Identities

The current research investigates the mechanism that how new ventures growth is affected through entrepreneurial business ties. The study introduces multiple mediators to the model to clearly establish the link between business ties and new ventures growth. To test the hypotheses, data were collected from 325 new ventures operating in Pakistan from 2015 to 2017. We found a positive and significant relationship between business ties and new ventures growth. We also found that resource leveraging, resource bundling and resource acquisition fully mediates the stated relationship. Based on our findings we concluded that new ventures give more attention to resource leveraging and resources bundling as well in order to perform well. Managerial and theoretical implications are also discussed.

Building Healthy Community Relationships Through Food Security and Food Sovereignty

ABSTRACTBackgroundFood insecurity disproportionately affects Indigenous Peoples and is linked to poor health outcomes. Indigenous Peoples’ food systems once sustained their thriving societies; however, colonial policies of displacement and imposed assimilation severed connections to Indigenous food systems and lands, disrupting identity, culture, and well-being.ObjectiveIn this article we share a grass-roots designed program that addresses food security and heeds Haudenosaunee teachings. The Story of Creation, the Great Law, and Ohénton Karihwatéhkwen (the words that come before all else) were the basis of the framework. The program acknowledges and uses community strengths and skills to enhance social connections and links with land and creation.MethodsThe program brought together interested and knowledgeable community members and stakeholders to discuss and better understand food security in the community. This group formed as an advisory group called Ieiénthos Akotióhkwa – ‘Planting Group’ who shaped the food security activities.ResultsThe program delivered workshops to build skills and share knowledge about food production and preparation. It targeted diverse participant interests and needs within an environment meant to nurture social connections. The program planted food-bearing trees and plants and created a seed library to create edible landscapes. We invited a broad scope of community knowledge- and skill-holders to share their talents with the community, to reinforce positive connections with each other, and to carry on cultural practices.ConclusionsChallenges included program sustainability linked to short-term funding and personnel turnover. Strengths involved using a culturally based framework that enhanced program coherence, and facilitated collaboration with local initiatives focused on well-being, practicing culture, and respecting the environment. Haudenosaunee teachings hold values and principles for a society that provides food for all. These teachings are a framework for a culturally rich program to support food security skills and resources, but also Indigenous cultural identity and practices.

Identification with ancestral culture is associated with fewer internalizing problems among older Naskapi adolescents.

The manifestations of externalizing and internalizing behaviors among minority adolescents might best be understood by examining their relation to culturally specific factors, such as cultural identity, as well as to factors that seem to be relevant across cultures, such as age and gender. In this study, we examined the roles of age and gender in moderating the relation between self-reported cultural identity and externalizing and internalizing problems and the interaction between Indigenous and Mainstream cultural identity in relation to problematic behaviors. The participants included 61 students (32 female) with a mean age of 14.5 years (SD = 1.69) from a Naskapi reserve in Quebec, Canada. Age moderated the relation between identification with Indigenous culture and internalizing symptomatology. Indigenous and Mainstream cultural identity did not interact in predicting internalizing or externalizing problems. Consistent with the available evidence regarding the centrality of identity in adolescent development, the magnitude of the inverse relation between identification with Indigenous culture and number of clinical internalizing symptoms appears to increase in significance later in adolescence. The lack of an interaction between Indigenous and Mainstream cultural identity in relation to internalizing and externalizing problems suggests that it is the need to consider both cultures individually without the assumption that one negates the other.

The Predicament of Language and Culture: Advocacy, Anthropology, and Dormant Language Communities

A growing literature in linguistic anthropology critically examines the rhetoric of endangered language advocacy. A number of themes remain underexplored, however, including the invocation of “culture” to justify language preservation, the interests of communities without fluent heritage language speakers, and anthropology's contribution to potentially problematic advocacy tropes. Discourses like “language is the core of culture” and “when a language dies, a culture dies” are widespread in language activism even though they undermine communities’ efforts to maintain distinctive cultural identities in the wake of language shift and put dormant language communities in a double bind. While Boasian anthropology contains anti‐essentialist and counter‐nationalist perspectives on language, culture, and race, some Herderian advocacy tropes are borrowed from the (also Boasian) tradition of linguistic relativity in its popular Whorfian iteration. Drawing on my research on Chiwere language politics, I identify two forms of agency available to endangered and dormant language communities: one form of agency resists language loss but accepts dominant ideologies of national difference that make heritage languages essential to indigenous cultural identities, while another form of agency accepts language loss but resists Herderian nationalist expectations that authentic indigenous communities speak their traditional languages. [advocacy rhetoric, dormant language communities, language and culture ideologies, agency, Chiwere]