Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day! I chose to honor the Indigenous peoples from Arctic region, includ
Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day! I chose to honor the Indigenous peoples from Arctic region, including the Inuit and Yup’ik, through my artwork today. I think it’s super cool that one of the ways that the Inuit are reclaiming their cultural roots are by getting traditional tattoos through the poke method with needles made of bone or sinew. The tattooing stopped 100 years ago because Western missionaries deemed the practice evil, and so it was a dying tradition. Face tattoos are a rite of passage into womanhood; they represent beauty and significant experiences, and are spiritual blessings for a good afterlife. And they’re frikkin badass. I knew near nothing about these Indigenous groups until I encountered them in academia. In my research on cultural considerations for suicide prevention, I have learned that the most impressive suicide prevention trainings have come from Indigenous peoples. Suicide rates for indigenous groups can be alarmingly high, especially among Indigenous communities that do not control or own their own community resources (Chandler & Lalonde, 2009). Stripping away a people’s power and identity is traumatizing and, unsurprisingly, has huge intergenerational impacts on mental health. Conventional Western approaches to psychology and suicide prevention don’t work for these communities because it repeats that exact problematic pattern of saviorism - of assuming that Western thought is universal and it is the solution for everyone.When you center the approach on reclamation, decolonization and empowering the people in their own healing journey, this is how they thrive. Yup’ik youth suicide prevention, as determined by the elders, IS reconnection to and celebration of their cultural roots. Their culturally responsive “suicide prevention trainings” do not mean sitting in a room being taught by trainers what warning signs look like in a presentation. It is being led by elders in seal hunting or fishing in the late summer/early fall, or setting fish traps and learning about ice safety in the late fall/early winter (Rasmus et al., 2019). It is honoring and celebrating who they are as their own people and culture.In my research, I have realized how little I know about Indigenous communities and culture. I’ve set out to actively learn and celebrate way more. -- source link
#indigenous#alaska native