American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research

• Main Author: Ph.D Lisa Wexler
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Indian; Inupiaq; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1078.6203; http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/PublicHealth/research/centers/CAIANH/journal/Documents/Volume%2016/16%281%29_Wexler_Inupiat_Youth_Narratives_1-24.pdf

Linking colonialism-historical and ongoing-to the health disparities experienced by Indigenous 1 people is an important step in understanding how to begin to promote health and wellness in Native communities. By articulating the ways in which imposed categories and judgments can be implicated in Indigenous young people's psychological dis-ease, this article attempts to illustrate the ways in which colonial consciousness is internalized by youth to their detriment. Highlighting the link between colonialism and self-destruction among Inupiaq young people challenges the common characterization of suicide as mainly a biomedical issue, and repositions it as a political problem stemming from colonization. Indigenous people in general and Arctic people in particular have experienced profound social and cultural changes over the past century. The resulting acculturation stress, identity confl icts, and discontinuities between past and present have been associated with