Challenges to Health and Well-Being of Native American Communities

Health programs using a Western approach to health have dominated traditional American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) models for healing and prevention. To be culturally competent, health programs must begin to define community, prevention, networking, collaboration, and healing as it relates to cultural understanding and awareness. In order to be effective in working with AI/AN communities, providers and programs must incorporate all elements of healing and prevention and include communities in developing appropriate interpretations and analyses of health and dimensions of vulnerability. Ideally, this collaborative process is ever-expanding and inclusive of the role of culture, context, community. Cultural competence will lead to the development of new understandings and models that better meet the health care needs of AI/AN peoples.⁷

Alcohol misuse

Alcohol misuse is considered by most of America¡¦s indigenous population to be their most serious and significant health problem; it is a problem that affects almost every facet of life. Discussions about mental and physical health, deviance, familial problems, and community structure and function among Native Americans must include, in some form or another, alcohol use and misuse influences.

Enduring spirit can have drawbacks

AI/AN peoples have survived for thousands of years under all kinds of conditions and circumstances. They are stubborn in holding onto what they feel is important and they discard what they do not feel they need„ooften with community consensus. Vine DeLoria, Jr., (1969) stated it most succinctly in his book Custer Died for Your Sins: "They do not fly from fad to fad seeking novelty. That is what makes them Indian."⁸ At the same time, stubbornness may inhibit adoption of approaches that might prove useful.

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