“Our Culture Is Medicine”: Perspectives of Native Healers on Posttrauma Recovery Among American Indian and Alaska Native Patients
Open accessAbstract
American Indian and Alaska Native (Native) people experience more traumatic events and are at higher risk for developing posttraumatic stress disorder compared with the general population. We conducted in-depth interviews with six Native healers about their perspectives on traumatic injury and healing. We analyzed the interviews using an inductive approach to identify common themes. We categorized these themes into four categories: causes and consequences of traumatic injury, risk factors, protective factors, and barriers to care. The implications of our study include a need for improving cultural competence among health care and social services personnel working with Native trauma patients. Additional cumulative analyses of Native healers and trauma patients would contribute to a much-needed body of knowledge on improving recovery and promoting healing among Native trauma patients.
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Indigenous communities have called for health interventions to be culturally centered, not just culturally tailored, since culture is medicine.
“Indigenous communities have called for health interventions to be culturally centered (not just culturally tailored) since “culture is medicine” (Bassett et al., 2012).”
From Growing from Our Roots: Strategies for Developing Culturally Grounded Health Promotion Interventions in American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Communities (2020) · cites this paper as Bassett et al., 2012
The Discussion says the interviewed healers regarded culture as the primary vehicle for healing and articulated the principle that “culture is medicine.” The paper also describes calls for traditional healing to transform psychotherapy, but it does not establish a community-wide call for culturally centered interventions *instead of* culturally tailored ones; it describes its own intervention as culturally tailored (Original Research & Contributions). (LLM, conf=0.84)
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- Authors
- Bassett, D., Tsosie, U., & Nannauck, S.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- ORCID
- Tsosie, Ursula
- Venue
- The Permanente Journal
- Publisher
- The Permanente Federation
- Published
- 2012-03
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 19-27
- ISSN
- 1552-5767 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-5775
- PMC
- PMC3327107
- OpenAlex
- W2106788547
- Cited by
- 102
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 3 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 1.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- The Permanente Journal (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- University of Washington
- National Institute of Mental Health (T32MH082709)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Cultural Competency in Health Care
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research
- Keywords
- American Indians and Alaska Natives, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic injury, cultural competence, barriers to care, protective factors, risk factors, indigenous healing practices
- MeSH terms
- Aged, Alaska, Female, Health Services Accessibility, Humans, Indians, North American, Interviews as Topic, Male, Medicine, Traditional, Middle Aged, Risk Factors, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic, Wounds and Injuries
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