Rethinking Resilience from Indigenous Perspectives

Author:

Kirmayer Laurence J1,Dandeneau Stéphane2,Marshall Elizabeth3,Phillips Morgan Kahentonni4,Williamson Karla Jessen5

Affiliation:

1. James McGill Professor and Director, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec; Director, Culture and Mental Health Research Unit, Lady Davis Institute, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, Quebec

2. Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Université du Québec, Montreal, Quebec

3. Director of the Treaty Beneficiary Association, Eskasoni, Nova Scotia; Community Researcher, Roots of Resilience Project, Eskasoni, Nova Scotia

4. Community Researcher, Roots of Resilience Project, Culture and Mental Health Research Unit, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, Quebec

5. Assistant Professor, Educational Foundations, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Abstract

The notions of resilience that have emerged in developmental psychology and psychiatry in recent years require systematic rethinking to address the distinctive cultures, geographic and social settings, and histories of adversity of indigenous peoples. In Canada, the overriding social realities of indigenous peoples include their historical rootedness to a specific place (with traditional lands, communities, and transactions with the environment) and the profound displacements caused by colonization and subsequent loss of autonomy, political oppression, and bureaucratic control. We report observations from an ongoing collaborative project on resilience in Inuit, Métis, Mi'kmaq, and Mohawk communities that suggests the value of incorporating indigenous constructs in resilience research. These constructs are expressed through specific stories and metaphors grounded in local culture and language; however, they can be framed more generally in terms of processes that include: regulating emotion and supporting adaptation through relational, ecocentric, and cosmocentric concepts of self and personhood; revisioning collective history in ways that valorize collective identity; revitalizing language and culture as resources for narrative self-fashioning, social positioning, and healing; and renewing individual and collective agency through political activism, empowerment, and reconciliation. Each of these sources of resilience can be understood in dynamic terms as emerging from interactions between individuals, their communities, and the larger regional, national, and global systems that locate and sustain indigenous agency and identity. This social–ecological view of resilience has important implications for mental health promotion, policy, and clinical practice.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Subject

Psychiatry and Mental health

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