The Role of Education in American Indian Self-Determination: Lessons from the Ramah Navajo Community School

Since 1975 the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act has enabled American Indian communities to enact self-determination through community-based schooling. In this study conducted by a Navajo researcher, the Ramah Navajo community defined self-determination and how it was operationalized within the community and school. The study demonstrates how education based on Navajo epistemology has been integral to self-determination at Ramah, underscoring the importance of incorporating Native American epistemologies in schooling for Indigenous students.     

Joint venture capital investment for clean technologies and their problems in developing countries

All technological developments are aimed at improving the quality of life of a community of people. Biotechnology is a technology which allows the exploitation of microorganisms, plants and animal cells to take place within an economic framework. Developing countries are looking for programmes achieving sustainable, economical growth conducive to a higher per capita income of the community. Any joint venture which promises social advances and economic benefits will have to be rural-based. This presentation discusses the need for a change in fermentation industry attitudes to allow joint venture capital investment in clean technologies together with the problems developing countries face for the implementation of such technologies.The author is with MIRCEN-Biotechnology Brisbane and the Pacific Regional Network, Department of Microbiology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia 4072, Australia     

Jesus, peyote, and the holy people: alcohol abuse and the ethos of power in Navajo healing

Of the three religious healing traditions that coexist within the contemporary Navajo health care system, the Native American Church (NAC) and Pentecostal Christianity are more actively involved in the treatment of alcohol and substance abuse than is Traditional Navajo healing. This article examines these two more recent healing traditions as religious responses to the contemporary Navajo crisis of alcohol and substance abuse as well as to socioeconomic changes. These traditions offer new kinds of power, social networks, and personal meaning that facilitate a transformation of self, a revitalized sense of community, and a new vision of the possibilities of the future for Navajo people who suffer. Examining the ethos of power that underlies Navajo healing can complement the theoretical emphasis on harmony and beauty in anthropological research on Navajo culture and religion.     

Practical Environmentalism on the Pine Ridge Reservation: Confronting Structural Constraints to Indigenous Stewardship

Parallels exist between the academic theory of a dwelling approach to resilience and the Indigenous Stewardship Model developed on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. In both approaches, sustainable resource management depends on a practical environmentalism that creates linkages between local community members and their surrounding ecosystem. Research on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reveals that Lakota people possess a conservation ethic that stems from their physical connection to place. However, tribal, state, and federal land policies create structural barriers that reduce access of Lakota households to the land, which in turn reduces adaptability and resilience in their ecological practice. To overcome these barriers, Lakota households envision local stewardship of reservation lands and resources. Particular emphasis is placed on the intergenerational transfer of knowledge to Lakota youth, to transcend local and political conflict, and to reestablish social and cultural relationships with the reservation’s ecology.     

Nostalgia and Degeneration: The Moral Economy of Drinking in Navajo Society

This article focuses on how some members of Navajo society use narratives regarding alcohol and drinking to comment on cultural degeneration and the decay of the traditional Navajo moral economy. These narratives drinking are seldom solely about alcohol but refer to a host of distinct yet interrelated concerns involving moral values, individual and collective identities, underdevelopment, imagined histories, psychic conflict, and social contention. This article sheds light on how evaluations of alcohol and drinking problems, as encapsulated in narratives of degeneration, fit into the overall context of contemporary Navajo society. Narratives of degeneration juxtapose a degenerate present to a nostalgic past and in the process direct moral censure toward two primary groups in Navajo society, namely, young people and others who drink to excess, [drinking, Native Americans, Navajo, narrative, alcohol]     

Economic Aspects of Mandan/Hidatsa Giveaways

Abstract

This paper eKamines the giveaway ceremonies of the Mandan and Hidatsa of Ft. Berthold Reservation. The giveaway, the public distribution of goods, is an integral part of contemporary Plains Indian culture, yet its economic and social functions have only recently been described. This paper adds to the recent studies by describing some giveaways of the Mandan and Hidatsa and identifying some of the economic aspects of the giveaway.     

Depressive illness and Navajo healing

What is the experience of Navajo patients in Navajo religious healing who, by the criteria and in the vernacular of contemporary psychiatry, would be diagnosed with the disorder called depression? We ask this question in the context of a double dialogue between psychiatry and anthropology and between these disciplines' academic constructs of illness and those of contemporary Navajos. The dialogue is conducted in the arena of patient narratives, providing a means for observing and explicating processes of therapeutic change in individuals, for illustrating variations in forms of Navajo religious healing sought out by patients demonstrating similar symptoms of distress, and for considering the heuristic utility of psychiatric diagnoses and nomenclature in the conceptualization of illness, recovery, and religious healing. From among the 37 percent of patients participating in the Navajo Healing Project who had a lifetime history of a major depressive illness, three are discussed herein, their selection based on two criteria: (1) all met formal psychiatric diagnostic criteria for a major depressive episode at the time of their healing ceremonies, and (2) together, their experiences illustrate the range of contemporary Navajo religious healing, including Traditional, Native American Church (NAC), and Christian forms. We suggest that, despite the explicit role of the sacred in religious healing interventions available to Navajo patients, differences between biomedical and religious healing systems may be of less significance than their shared existential engagement of problems such as those glossed as depression.     

Associations of Circulating Oxidized LDL and Conventional Biomarkers of Cardiovascular Disease in a Cross-Sectional Study of the Navajo Population

The prevalences of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) have increased among the Navajo Native American community in recent decades. Oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL) is a novel CVD biomarker that has never been assessed in the Navajo population. We examined the relationship of oxLDL to conventional CVD and T2D risk factors and biomarkers in a cross-sectional population of Navajo participants. This cross-sectional study included 252 participants from 20 Navajo communities from the Diné Network for Environmental Health Project. Plasma samples were tested for oxLDL levels by a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to determine the relationship of oxLDL and oxidized- to non-oxidized lipoprotein ratios to glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin 6 (IL6) and demographic and health variables. Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and obesity are very prevalent in this Navajo population. HbA1c, CRP, body mass index (BMI), high-density lipoprotein, and triglycerides were at levels that may increase risk for CVD and T2D. Median oxLDL level was 47 (36.8–57) U/L. Correlational analysis showed that although oxLDL alone was not associated with HbA1c, oxLDL/HDL, oxLDL/LDL and CRP were significantly associated with HbA1c and glucose. OxLDL, oxLDL/HDL and oxLDL/LDL were significantly associated with CRP. Multivariate analysis showed that triglycerides were a common and strong predictor of oxLDL, oxLDL/HDL and oxLDL/LDL. OxLDL was trended with HbA1c and glucose but did not reach significance, however, HbA1c was an independent predictor of OxLDL/HDL. CRP trended with oxLDL/HDL and was a weak predictor of oxLDL/LDL. This Navajo subset appears to have oxLDL levels comparable to subjects without evidence of CVD reported in other studies. The high prevalence of T2D, hypertension and obesity along with abnormal levels of other biomarkers including HbA1c indicate that the Navajo population has a worsening CVD risk profile.     

Social policy,economics, and demographic change in Nanticoke-Moor ethnohistory

The Nanticoke-Moors of Delaware are an ethnic group of Native American, Afro-American, and Euro-American descent. Their physiognomic and ethnic marginality has subjected them to a limited range of social and economic options under the influence of American racial policies. This article concerns their ethnic formation in the colonial period and the demographic effects (changes in fertility, mortality, and structure) of their 19th- and 20th-century social history. The demographic sample consists of 406 headstones from three community cemeteries. Each cemetery represents a socially and economically distinct unit, including a group that identifies with its traditional Indian heritage, an Afro-American acculturated group, and a migrant community of marginal ethnic affiliation. Variation and change in life expectancy is shown. Relationships between the political and economic processes affecting Nanticoke-Moor social affiliation, and those affecting color caste-class formation among mainstream Afro-Americans, are discussed.     

Physical growth in a transitional economy: the aftermath of South African apartheid

The economic transition in developing countries is not always the result of the change from a centrally-planned to a free-market economy, but may be found within an already existing free-market economy as a result of profound political change, as in South Africa. The release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990 heralded an end both to the political system of apartheid and to the concomitant social, political, and economic disenfranchisement of 30 million non-White people in South Africa. The first freely elected non-White government came to power in 1994 and initiated a number of social and economic reforms aimed at alleviating the worst consequences of apartheid. This paper examines the effect of post-apartheid economic and social transition on the growth and development of urban children. Over 4000 children born in Soweto and Johannesburg were enrolled in the Birth to Ten (BTT) birth-cohort study in 1990. Whilst these children were born with lower birth weights than in developed countries, they did grow strongly in infancy, particularly in weight, to reflect normal reference values for body mass index (BMI) by 1 year of age. While post-apartheid social and economic changes were expected to take some time to affect child growth and development, the rate of change has been slower than expected. Data from the BTT study demonstrate that the growth of White children continues to be superior to that of their non-White peers and differences that existed at birth and during infancy have not diminished during childhood and early adolescence. Whatever factors are changed at the national or community levels during economic (and social) transition in South Africa appear not yet to have resulted in improved child physical growth.     

Organizational Change and Adaptation: Community Cooperatives and Capital Control in the Western Isles of Scotland

The community cooperative on Barra (Western Isles of Scotland) expanded in 1984 to incorporate a limited company—Iasg Bharraidh—whose major purpose was the collective marketing of shellfish for island fishermen. This response to falling prices for shellfish involved the substitution of collective activity for individualistic marketing, and other adaptations to a wider economic system beyond their control. The history of the shellfish industry and the community cooperative will be given to provide context for an evolving marketing structure. The limited company is analyzed in terms of a transitional organization designed to permit the community to adapt to changing conditions in the wider political economy. Considerations of risk, technological change, resource conservation, and community dynamics are introduced, to indicate that cooperative organizations in peripheral areas perform very complex functions, not the least of which is to alleviate social unrest in the periphery. Cooperatives have both transformative and resistive roles. This paper tries to elucidate some of the factors that locate the Barra community cooperative within a strategy of transformation rather than that of resistance to wider social, economic, and political constraints.     

Transitional states in marine fisheries: adapting to predicted global change

Global climate change has the potential to substantially alter the production and community structure of marine fisheries and modify the ongoing impacts of fishing. Fish community composition is already changing in some tropical, temperate and polar ecosystems, where local combinations of warming trends and higher environmental variation anticipate the changes likely to occur more widely over coming decades. Using case studies from the Western Indian Ocean, the North Sea and the Bering Sea, we contextualize the direct and indirect effects of climate change on production and biodiversity and, in turn, on the social and economic aspects of marine fisheries. Climate warming is expected to lead to (i) yield and species losses in tropical reef fisheries, driven primarily by habitat loss; (ii) community turnover in temperate fisheries, owing to the arrival and increasing dominance of warm-water species as well as the reduced dominance and departure of cold-water species; and (iii) increased diversity and yield in Arctic fisheries, arising from invasions of southern species and increased primary production resulting from ice-free summer conditions. How societies deal with such changes will depend largely on their capacity to adapt--to plan and implement effective responses to change--a process heavily influenced by social, economic, political and cultural conditions.     

A “Coca-Cola” Shape: Cultural Change,Body Image,and Eating Disorders in San Andrés,Belize

Eating disorders have been associated with developing nations undergoing rapid social transition, including participation in a global market economy and heavy media exposure. San Andrés, Belize, a community with many risk factors associated with the cross-cultural development of eating disorders, has shown remarkable resistance to previously documented patterns, despite a local focus on female beauty. Drawing on longitudinal person-centered ethnography with adolescent girls, this article examines why this community appears exceptional in light of the literature. First, community beauty and body image ideals and practices are explicated. Then, a protective ethnopsychology is proposed as a key mediating factor of the rapid socio-cultural change among young women. Finally, possible nascent cases of eating disordered behavior are discussed in light of their unique phenomenology: that is, having to do more with economic opportunity in the tourism industry and less with personal distress or desire for thinness. Close, meaning-centered examination of eating and body image practices may aid understanding and prevention of eating disorders among adolescents undergoing rapid social change in situations of globalization and immigration.     

The whole universe is my cathedral: a contemporary Navajo spiritual synthesis

This article discusses the three major spiritual healing ways used by Navajo Indians today: Traditional healing practices that have been used for generations and still have a dynamic existence relevant to everyday Navajo life; Christian healing traditions, ranging from Catholic Charismatic to Protestant Pentecostal; and practices of the Native American Church (NAC). The complex relationship among these healing traditions on the Navajo reservation is examined through a case study of a Navajo woman whose personal spirituality includes all three. Faced with serious medical problems, this devout Catholic turned to Navajo Traditional and Native American Church spiritual diagnosis and treatment. This analysis is the occasion for a reflection on the contemporary relevance of the kind of spiritual synthesis characterized in this woman's experience.     

Institutional patterns favoring high fertility in underdeveloped areas

Abstract

Data presented indicate that the sex ratio of the Navajo Tribe has shifted since the 1940's and now shows a preponderance of women rather than men. The reasons for this shift, which roughly parallel a similar shift in the general population of the United States, are : (1) a decline in maternal mortality rates; (2) an increase in male mortality rates, particularly from accidents; and (3) greater out‐migration of men than women. Some of the consequences of the changing ratio include: increasing proportion of young widows with dependent children; a growing desire for labor force participation on the part of women; out‐marriage of Navajo women; and, in the future, the probable isolation of elderly widows who may become the responsibility of social welfare agencies.     

Education Through Art

In this article, the author revisits a case study presented in Arts Education Policy Review 105(1) in September/October 2003. The author discusses Arts Collaborator's Incorporated's (ACI) efforts to educate the community about art and about arts opportunities in River City. Themes visited in the discussion are community development through the arts, and connecting economic development to education. Implications for the arts education community that the author draws from this discussion are (a) ACI has assets and connections that the arts education community may not have, (b) ACI uses its influence to teach and promote certain kinds of art, and (c) the arts education community needs to be aware of advocacy groups to maintain education standards and to fully use available opportunities.     

Anthropological films and the myth of scientific truths

This article describes, analyzes, and interprets various cultural influences on the representational drawings of young Navajo students, in order to understand their changing cultural viewpoint. The data and drawings were gathered from two elementary art classes in one Navajo public school in northeastern Arizona, as part of an ongoing study. This information is compared to anthropological data gathered on adult Navajo drawings nearly 30 years ago, as well as to some dominant theories on child art. Data reveal students are influenced by Navajo traditional images, classroom teachers’ versions of school art, popular art images, pan‐Indian influences, and peer copying. Results reveal the persistence of traditional nature imagery, the incorporation of similar schemas and color use with mainstream children, a keen ability to render realistic images and space, and the incorporation of those American things that the Navajo regard as “good for them.” Keen drawing abilities appear at a young age among the Navajo because of the high status of the arts, traditional education through observation and demonstration, peer imitation, and male drawing competition.     

Unraveling the Anchoring Cord: Navajo Relocation, 1974 to 1996

The Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act slated 10,000 Navajo for relocation off land partitioned to the Hopi. In the Navajo philosophical system, such forced relocation constitutes a breach of personhood; it ruptures relocatees' inalienable connections to their matrilineal homes, actuated through burial of their umbilical cords and other acts. Owing to the reciprocal nature of relations between the Navajo and the earth, the long-term debilitating effects are far-reaching. The well-being of Mother Earth is just as dependent on the care of those given stewardship over particular locales as Navajo are on the continuing nurturance of their mother, the earth.     

This Bed of Roses Has Thorns: Cultural Assumptions and Community in an Elementary School

Educational reformers and social observers call for increasing community in our schools and neighborhoods. In that discourse, community appears as a catch phrase that has become meaningless in its ubiquity. Through an ethnographic study of a small elementary school in which community is regularly invoked, the author identifies community's negative as well as beneficial aspects and discusses the implications for schools.     

Revisiting the Navajo way: lessons for contemporary healing

Given the paradox of the success of modern medical technology and the growing patient dissatisfaction with present-day medicine, critics have called for a reevaluation of contemporary medical practice. This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of traditional Navajo healers and their ceremonies to highlight key aspects of healing. A phenomenological view of medical practice takes into account three key features: the lifeworld, the lived body, and understanding. Because of their closeness to a phenomenological view, traditional Navajo mythology and healing practices offer insight into the healing process. Contemporary physicians can appreciate the phenomenological elements of Navajo healing ceremonies, including the Mountain Chant. Navajo healers help patients make sense of their illnesses and direct their lives accordingly, an outcome available to contemporary practitioners, who are also gifted with the benefits of new technologies. By examining scientific medicine, Navajo healing practices, and phenomenology as complementary disciplines, the authors provide the groundwork for reestablishing a more therapeutic view of health.