“Let Our Apache Heritage and Culture Live on Forever and Teach the Young Ones”: Development of The Elders’ Resilience Curriculum, an Upstream Suicide Prevention Approach for American Indian Youth
Abstract
The White Mountain Apache Tribe have developed an innovative curriculum that connects youth through Elders to their heritage, traditions, and culture, which has been proven to be a protective factor for native Americans. The development process took 4½ years and included community stakeholder buy-in, Elders' Council group formation, extensive formative work to identify content, iterative feedback between curriculum writers and Elders, and Elder training prior to implementation. Members of the Elders' Council have been visiting the local schools to teach youth about the Apache culture, language, and way of life since February 2014 reaching over 1000 youth. This approach demonstrates a promising upstream suicide prevention strategy. We discuss the process of development, implementation, and lessons learned, as this curriculum has potential for adaptation by other Indigenous communities.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Connecting AIANs with their culture, language, traditions, and heritage through elders is protective because these interactions help to develop cultural knowledge, strength, and increase cultural identity.
“Connecting AIANs with their culture, language, traditions, and heritage through elders is protective because these interactions help to develop cultural knowledge, strength, and increase cultural identity [71]”
From Substance and Behavioral Addictions among American Indian and Alaska Native Populations (2022) · cites this paper as [71]
Characteristics such as the ability to find a greater meaning, purpose, and internal strengths build and contribute to resilience among AIAN.
“Characteristics such as the ability to find a greater meaning, purpose, and internal strengths build and contribute to resilience among AIAN [71].”
From Substance and Behavioral Addictions among American Indian and Alaska Native Populations (2022) · cites this paper as [71]
Cites
Critical Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy and Indigenous Education Sovereignty
McCarty, T., & Lee, T. (2014) · Harvard Educational Review · doi:10.17763/haer.84.1.q83746nl5pj34216 · Cited by 614 · see citing works
Moving from Colonization toward Balance and Harmony: A Native American Perspective on Wellness
Hodge, D. R., Limb, G. E., & Cross, T. L. (2009) · Social Work · doi:10.1093/sw/54.3.211 · Cited by 193 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Allen, J., Wexler, L., & Rasmus, S. (2022) · Prevention Science · doi:10.1007/s11121-021-01265-0 · Cited by 93 · see citing works
Substance and Behavioral Addictions among American Indian and Alaska Native Populations
Soto, C., West, A. E., Ramos, G. G., & Unger, J. B. (2022) · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · doi:10.3390/ijerph19052974 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
“Connecting AIANs with their culture, language, traditions, and heritage through elders is protective because these interactions help to develop cultural knowledge, strength, and increase cultural identity [71] (Please see Supplementary Table S2).”
Background
- Authors
- Cwik, M., Goklish, N., Masten, K., Lee, A., Suttle, R., Alchesay, M., O'Keefe, V., & Barlow, A.
- Affiliations
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Johns Hopkins University Baltimore MD USA
- Corresponding author
- Cwik, Mary
- Venue
- American Journal of Community Psychology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2019-07-16
- Volume
- 64
- Issue
- 1-2
- Pages
- 137-145
- ISSN
- 0091-0562 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-2770
- OpenAlex
- W2957791592
- Cited by
- 73
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 5
- FWCI
- 9.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Journal of Community Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (1U79SM061473)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Suicide and Self-Harm Studies
- Social Sciences › Education › Indigenous and Place-Based Education
- Keywords
- suicide prevention, Native American youth, White Mountain Apache Tribe, cultural heritage, indigenous culture, upstream prevention, protective factors, curriculum development, indigenous languages, intergenerational teaching, community stakeholder engagement
- MeSH terms
- Suicide Prevention, Arizona, Culture, Curriculum, Health Services, Indigenous, Humans, Indians, North American, Suicide
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
