Looking across three generations of Alaska Natives to explore how culture fosters indigenous resilience

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 DOI: 10.1177/1363461513495085

published online 6 September 2013Transcultural PsychiatryLisa Wexler, Linda Joule, Joe Garoutte, Janet Mazziotti and Kim Hopper

resilience and growing up in an Alaska Native community''Being responsible, respectful, trying to keep the tradition alive:'' Cultural

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DOI: 10.1177/1363461513495085 tps.sagepub.com

“Being responsible, respectful,trying to keep the tradition alive:”Cultural resilience and growing upin an Alaska Native community

Lisa WexlerUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst

Linda Joule and Joe GaroutteNorthwest Alaska Community Members

Janet MazziottiUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst

Kim HopperColumbia University and Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research

Abstract

Indigenous circumpolar youth are experiencing challenges of growing up in a context

much different from that of their parents and their grandparents due to rapid and

imposed social change. Our study is interested in community resilience: the meaning

systems, resources, and relationships that structure how youth go about overcoming

difficulties. The research reflects an understanding that social and cultural ecologies

influence people’s available and meaningful options. The in-depth, qualitative study of

20 youth from the same Arctic community shows Inupiat (Alaska Native) youth are

navigating challenges. Findings from this research suggest that Inupiat youth reflect more

flexible patterns of resilience when they are culturally grounded. This cultural founda-

tion involves kinship networks that mediate young people’s access to cultural and

material assets. Our participants emphasized the importance of taking care of others

and “giving back to the community.” Being “in the country” linked youth to traditional

ontology that profoundly shifted how youth felt in relation to themselves, to others, and

the world. The vast majority of participants’ “fulfillment narratives” centered on doing

subsistence and/or cultural activities. In relation to this, young people were more likely

Corresponding author:

Lisa Wexler, Department of Public Health, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 715 N Pleasant St, Amherst,

MA 01003, USA.

Email: [email protected]

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to demonstrate versatility in their resilience strategies when deploying coherent self-

narratives that reflected novel yet culturally resonant styles. Young women were more

likely to demonstrate this by reconfiguring notions of culture and gender identity in

ways that helped them meet challenges in their lives. Lastly, generational differences in

understandings signal particular ways that young people’s historical and political pos-

itioning influences their access to cultural resources.

Keywords

Alaska Native, community resilience, cultural strengths, indigenous youth, social

change

Introduction

Indigenous circumpolar youth are experiencing challenges of growing up in a con-text much different from that of their parents and their grandparents due to rapidand imposed social change. In our primarily Inupiaq (Alaska Native) study com-munity, typical life styles, economic opportunities, even everyday language chan-ged dramatically over the last three generations. There has been an abrupttransition from the primarily nomadic, subsistence life style of grandparentsto largely residing in settlements where day-to-day living relies on store-boughtgoods and village services. Importantly, young people’s learning is nowmanaged extensively by schooling systems that function outside of the purviewof many Inupiaq family members (Chance, 1990; Wexler, 2005). In this con-text, many older Inupiat people are uncertain about how to support youth inbecoming successful and responsible men and women in a modern context(Wexler, 2006). Young Inupiaq people, then, must learn as they go, negotiatingvarious (sometimes competing) value systems, developing strategies for dealingwith everyday problems and significant challenges, and figuring out how to findand take advantage of opportunities that were not available to their Elders. In thisway, young Inupiaq are “not just recipients of their parents’ culture but the cre-ators of a new version, reflecting the novel conditions in which they are growingup” (Levine, 2011, p. 426). These strategies for action, when taken together, offerus glimpses into the local and everyday contexts that shape indigenous youngpeople’s resilience.

Adhering to a new trend in resilience research (Kirmayer, Dandeneau, Marshall,Phillips, & Williamson, 2011; Ungar, 2011), our study is most interested in howcommunities structure the ways youth overcome hardship. With an understandingthat social and cultural ecologies shape people’s available and meaningful options,we consider how Inupiat youth are demonstrating cultural continuity by improvis-ing their ways through challenges. As Kirmayer, Brass, and Tait (2009) state,“living traditions are always works in progress” (p. 440). Culture shapes children’spathway into adulthood, meaning that there are public, patterned and historicallyreproduced symbolic practices which structure young people’s entry into maturity

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(Gone, Miller, & Rappaport, 1999). By carefully considering these patterns, wehope to contribute to an understanding of community resilience.

Community resilience considers that the ways youth go about overcoming diffi-culties are profoundly shaped by the meaning systems, resources, and relationshipsthat structure their lives. In reflecting on the meaning of resilience, one olderInupiaq youth offered an image of a willow bending in response to the icy westernwind that blows regularly through the coastal study community. With her hands,she showed how the roots of the bush allow it to remain standing even in the face of40-mile-an-hour gales. In explanation, she said, “our roots, our culture makes usstrong. That is resilience.” Our research focuses on that which grounds youngInupiaq people and confers to them the flexibility to remain strong in the face ofadversity. More specifically, our inquiry explores the ways that Inupiaq youthresilience—this flexible problem-solving during a complex period of life—takesparticular shape locally. Resilience, then, is patterned according to traditionalcultural understandings and practices, and reflects innovation, creativity, andadaptation by young people.

Arctic indigenous communities, like the Inupiaq study site, have undergonesocial disruptions in the last few decades which present unique challenges in struc-turing young people’s transition to adulthood. With attention to how youngInupiaq narratives reflect this social change, we intend to discover how youth“strategies of action” reveal cultural sources of strength. Aligning our analysiswith Ungar’s (2011) four principles of ecological resilience—decentrality, complex-ity, atypicality, and cultural relativity—(see Allen et al., this volume) we acknow-ledge the fluidity and contingencies that shape this resilience process, yet still aim todescribe the kinds of resources, capabilities, and perspectives that coalesce to makepatterns in the ways young Inupiaq people in this community respond to life chal-lenges. We believe that stories of Inupiaq youth resilience, as described by them,will make the models of assistance, shared priorities, and well-trodden routesthrough hardship discernible. Through the discursive clues that young people pre-sent to us, our analysis focuses on how this community is structuring resilienceprocesses of its young people.

Context

The study community has a majority Inupiaq population (approximately 75%) andis located above the Arctic Circle. Between 1890 and 1910, the nomadic, huntingInupiat population in Northwest Alaska experienced profound changes broughtabout by Colonial diseases, a surge in Western whaling activity, establishment ofChristian mission schools, and the gold rush. Since that time, Native villages wereestablished at the sites of mission schools where mandatory attendance createdsedentary communities. These settlements currently exist as “distinct tribes” withsovereign authority (Huhndorf & Huhndorf, 2011). Elders speak Inupiaq as theirprimary language, whereas the majority of other age groups speak primarilyEnglish. Inupiaq young people suffer significant health disparities, including

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extremely high rates of youth suicide (Wexler, Hill, Bertone-Johnson, &Fenaughty, 2008; Wexler, Silveira, & Bertone-Johnson, 2012), which has beenlinked to the modern experience of culture “loss” (Wexler, 2006).

The study was conducted in the largest, hub community (population 3,000).Most of the houses (80%) have indoor plumbing (Alaska Department ofCommerce Community and Economic Development, 2012). The median age inthe large village is 23 and approximately 50% of the population is under the ageof 18. The 650 houses of the village are situated very close together on a narrow spitof land. Housing is expensive and very limited, leading to crowded livingconditions.

Many Inupiat families in the community engage in some form of subsistenceactivities, including harvest (or receipt) of berries, and hunting of caribou, muskox, moose, fish, and large sea mammals. Although several families in the commu-nity have dog teams, these are mainly used for racing, not subsistence activities.Participation in traditional activities, therefore, requires capital to pay for gas (atprices at least twice those of urban Alaska) and equipment (snow machines, four-wheelers, and boats) to access “the country.” Most families consume store-boughtfoods for the majority of their meals.

The largest religious group is the Evangelical Friends. Many Elders are membersof this church, and have thus disallowed some traditional practices such as sha-manistic rituals and Inupiat dancing. Several years ago, however, the study com-munity formed an “Eskimo dance group” to revitalize Inupiat cultural dancing foryoung people. The study community is the economic, educational, and politicalregional hub, and is the only village in the region with air service to Anchorage.The Tribal Council—an active collaborator in the project—is the federally recog-nized “tribe” that represents the Inupiat residents. Representatives from othertribal agencies that are responsible for cultural continuity, economic growth, andhealth and social services were part of the study’s Local Steering Committee (LSC),offering guidance, direction, and analytical insights as the research progressed.

Resilience research in cultural context

Research with Native people has often found that the ongoing uses of traditions toassert cultural identities can play an important role in generating resilience (e.g.,Armstrong, Birnie-Lefcovitch, & Ungar, 2005; Holleran & Jung, 2005; Lemerle &Stewart, 2005). Identification and involvement with one’s culture can offer avenuesto helpful sense-making leading to problem-solving strategies that are both mean-ingful and deployable. Perhaps, this is why positive cultural identity appears toconfer feelings of self-worth, self-efficacy, connectedness, and purpose to indigen-ous people (e.g., Allen et al., 2006; Kral & Idlout, 2009; Paine, 2005; Whitbeck,Chen, Hoyt, & Adams, 2004). Culture, as we are using it here, provides a frame-work in which individuals can locate themselves in relation to others, to a largershared context, and to history. As Kirmayer et al. (2009) write, “Traditional storiesand myths are also emblems of identity that circulate among Aboriginal people,

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providing opportunities for mutual understanding and participation in a sharedworld” (p. 442).

In the study community, the everyday opportunities for imparting shared, trad-itional visions and skills have diminished over the last three generations.Traditionally, older people—parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents—confidentlypaved the way for Inupiaq youth to enter into adulthood. These roles had stabilityover time, and older family members had the knowledge, skills, and perspectivesthat young people needed to know as adults. There were specific contexts—themen’s house (qargi) and specific dwellings for women—in which young peoplereceived the instruction, knowledge, and skills they would need as adults fromolder family members (Burch, 2006). As in many Arctic, indigenous societies, chil-dren’s aspirations were typically scripted for both sexes, and appropriate genderroles were learned through observation and eventual emulation of same-sex parentsand relatives.

With the rapid social change experienced in this community, many olderInupiaq feel that they are not well prepared to support young people in becomingadults (Wexler, 2006). For example, imposed social changes resulted in literal com-munication gaps between generations. Grandparents speak primary Inupiaq andwere brought up doing primarily subsistence to survive. Parents of today’s youthwere sent far away (e.g., Oklahoma or Southeast Alaska) to boarding schools forhigh school, speak primarily English, and participate in a wage-based economy.Young Inupiaq, in contrast, were schooled in their home communities, and the vastmajority of them speak only English. The Inupiaq generations of today speakdifferent languages, and have had to respond to very different tensions and pres-sures of growing up. These historically situated experiences structured each gener-ation’s ideas about and pathways to becoming adults, and there is little continuitybetween them. Young Inupiaq people are thus navigating issues that arise fromvillage schooling, balancing the (sometimes conflicting) demands of Western andfamily life, and participating in a global youth culture, all of which are challengesthat are quite distinct from those faced by their Elders.

The divide that separates the lived experiences of Inupiaq generations has beenidentified as a contributor to youth problems, stress, and health disparities such assuicide (Wexler, 2006, 2009a). As early as the 1980s, the Regional Elders Councilacknowledged the breakdown in socialization practices, and so created the InupiatIlitqusiat (II) with the explicit goal of passing down the Inupiaq heritage toyounger generations. The Inupiat Ilitqusiat (II) were intended to establish asocial and cultural agenda that would be flexible enough to be shaped individuallyand locally, but broad enough to represent key Inupiaq ideals (McNabb, 1991).Codified and disseminated to combat what was perceived as an increasing lack ofadequate role modeling for youth, Inupiat Ilitqusiat (II) aimed at helping parentshand down cultural values to their children through “living better lives.” However,due to daily pressures and time spent in schools and other Western institutions(according to our Inupiaq research partners), today’s adults may not have had theopportunity to learn the meaning and intended implementation of the Inupiaq

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values. Today, Inupiat Ilitqusiat (II) are found on posters in virtually every publicbuilding in the study community, but the root of meaning may be obscure to some.This investigation is intended, in part, to describe the ways in which culture ismaintained and recreated by Inupiat young people as they navigate difficulties intheir lives while growing up.

Methods

The development of our cross-site research protocol has been described in detailelsewhere (Ulturgasheva et al., 2011), and the shared analytic strategy is articulatedin the introductory article (Allen et al., this volume). Here, we describe the methodsof inquiry, data analysis, and interpretative strategies undertaken by the localresearch team in collaboration with the Northwest Alaskan Inupiaq LocalSteering Committee (LSC). The LSC was integral in formulating interview ques-tions, identifying potential respondents, and analyzing the results. Participantswere chosen to represent a range of expected or actual success on their pathwaysto adulthood; 19 out of the 20 interviews were done by a non-Native woman who isa long-term resident of the community. All preliminary findings were shared withthe LSC to get guidance about our interpretations and about future directions ofour analysis. Insights were incorporated into the final analyses. The active involve-ment of LSC members (Joule and Garoutte, in particular) provides a more localand historically situated lens through which we interpret our findings.

Interviews were done with 20 young people total. Five boys and five girls inyounger (11–14) and older (15–18) age categories were interviewed so that bothgender and age comparisons could be made. The semistructured interview scheduleincluded questions about how youth spent their time, what challenges they encoun-tered and how they handled them, and their relationships. Questions also focusedspecifically on school, culture, family, and their future. Several questions askedyoung people about their community and their perceptions of other youngpeople. To allow for full exploration of interview questions, the interviews weresplit over the course of three, 1-hour sessions. All but three participants providedthree interviews for a total of 57 1-hour long interviews, which were audio-recordedand transcribed verbatim. Each participant also created a life timeline to show theimportant events that had occurred from the time they were born until the present.Participants decided what kinds of things to include in this, and therefore offer usglimpses into their values and priorities.

Three separate approaches were used to analyze the interview narratives:(a) grounded theory coding (Charmaz, 2006), (b) narrative analysis, and (c) dataanalysis in response to theory (as described in Allen et al., this volume). To maxi-mize consistency of code interpretation over time, operational definitions wereconstructed, as were contraindications for code use. ATLAS.ti software (Muhr,2004) was used as a tool to record the coding process, track coding density, andhelp identify emerging concepts among coded material. Additional codes were alsodeveloped to document general themes that were less directly articulated by youth,

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but ran across many interviews. For instance, deaths of significant family membersor stories of friends moving away were coded as “losing relationships” no matterthe idiosyncratic phrasing that youth may have used to describe these experiences.

Since our codebook had over 50 codes, each of the three members of theresearch team was assigned a set of similar codes she used for coding. For instance,one person had the codes “family dynamics,” “parenting,” and “being there forme,” and focused on the social and kinship patterns found in the narratives. At thebeginning of this process, the PI (Wexler) coded two complete transcripts using thewhole codebook, and compared this to the transcripts coded by three separateresearch assistants. There was a high rate of agreement (87%). To continue tocheck the accuracy of this coding process, the PI (Wexler) supervised the codingprocess by reading the transcripts and holding team meetings about each to resolveany areas of ambiguity. Once all transcripts were coded, we were able to identifythemes across all youth by examining coded sections in relation to resilience pat-terns and practices. Frequencies within and across transcripts were noted to gaugeprevalence of the themes.

In addition to the modified grounded theory analysis, a narrative description ofeach interviewee was constructed based on the research team’s combined under-standing of each youth’s described perspectives, experiences, and support. Sucha narrative provided a summary of the youth’s overall narrative story as well as asynthesis of the researchers’ impressions of that participant’s patterns of resilience.As an example, the coded excerpts from a transcript might identify several peoplewhom the interviewee has sought out for guidance. The narrative of that partici-pant could consider the ways in which s/he accessed help and the kinds of rela-tionships and situations that seemed to support that person’s capacity formaintaining and developing these connections. The narrative, then, provideda way for researchers to document their “reading” of participants’ narratives ina more fluid and comprehensive way.

In combination, the narrative representations of each youth and the examin-ation of aggregate data across young people through the coding process allowedfor a two-pronged approach, with the former providing possible exemplar casesthat represent themes that emerged from the latter. The life timelines were utilizedto better understand the value young people placed on particular events as definingmoments. To hone our interpretive tools and sensitize us to conceptualizations inthe resilience literature, we considered theories and concepts that could help usbetter understand our narrative and code-driven findings. Findings that resonatedwith the ecological resilience literature are highlighted. Gender and age differencesare described only if there were noteworthy and relevant distinctions in thefindings.

Findings: Personal and community resilience

Common challenges and personal resilience strategies. The most common difficulty, men-tioned by all but one of our participants (often repeatedly), was regret, sadness or

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longing for someone who is no longer a part of their daily life. Theseabsences are attributed to people moving away for employment or otheropportunities, divorce or other family problems, and death. Many consideredthis kind of difficulty as the biggest problem for kids in the village. Mostly,participants longed for family members, but several girls and a couple boystalked about friends moving away. Youth—more often in the older group—toldus about how families or older friends left the village to be able to accessmore opportunities (better schools or boarding school, more varied experiences,or better jobs).

As these accounts imply, for many young people, the community represented alack of possibilities that contributed to people’s departure. Most young people(17 of 20) associated “having nothing to do” with their hometown. Only threeparticipants did not mention boredom in their interviews, and all three had moreaccess to outdoor activities (hunting, fishing) by having their own (or use of a) bike,snow-go, four wheeler, or boat. Access to “the country” and skills to do subsistenceactivities greatly widened the scope of possibilities for action. None of our partici-pants associated boredom, a common town experience, with time spent at camp or“going out on the land.”

The country invited youth to enter a different way of being. According to youth,ideals of interaction, handed down for generations, are realized in the context of“the country” in contrast to town. Young people talked about how people rely oneach other more, are more apt to share, and have meaningful ways to contribute inthe country. Being on the land not only contributed to a collective sense of purposefor many kids, but it connected them with a sense of “how it used to be.” Manyyouth talked about how subsistence requires everyone to act selflessly, clarifieswhat is essential versus trivial, and invites respect between people. Town versuscountry environments created two distinct ways of being for young people. Oneolder boy explains:

Interviewer: I remember your Ana (grandmother) talking about how important it was

to get the kids out to camp.

Older boy: Yes.

Interviewer: Yes, that’s pretty neat.

Older boy: That’s where we [siblings] don’t fight much and we just like pretend with

each other [that] we’re friends and stuff.

Interviewer: Pretend?

Older boy: Yes, so for like family members over here in [town], we fight a lot

over toys and stuff. Toys like Xbox 360 and games and videos and candy and

snacks.

Interviewer: Yes, but you don’t do that out at camp or out in the country?

Older boy: No.

Interviewer: Why do you suppose that is? What’s the difference?

Older boy: We savor [appreciate] our stuff [when we are in the country] and most

likely share everything.

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Several of the youth narratives reflect a significant difference in how people act andfeel in town versus in the country. An older girl described her vision of traditionalversus modern life, saying:

There is a big difference. I was actually thinking about that last week before I went to

bed. What if we still lived in igloos and sod houses and wore fur clothes? It would be

really different. We wouldn’t have electronics and stuff. We probably wouldn’t get

bored ever.

Living in town is associated with boredom, pettiness, and interpersonal strife.Many of our participants told us that having “nothing to do” was the reason“why most of [the kids] get into trouble.”

Another aspect of town is captured in our second most common stressor, “beingmean to me.” Fifteen participants described multiple instances in which the youngperson experienced others as hostile or deliberately nonsupportive. “Being mean,”for girls who mentioned this stressor twice as often as boys, was likely to be peer-to-peer conflict. Most often described by younger girls, these stories depict tensionbetween “cliques” or former friends, deliberate exclusion, or spreading rumors.Girls were more likely to describe working out conflicts by talking and repairingthe relationship and younger ones often sought support from their mothers.A younger girl who was experiencing bullying at school described her mom’sactive role in solving it, “She [mom] said the next time she sees [the bully] thatshe was going to have a talk with her parents.” Mothers of young girls intervenedby speaking to a parent of the offender, defending their daughters directly (or onFacebook), or encouraging their daughter to solve the problem. When the step-father was the source of the conflict or bullying, there seemed to be limited optionsto address the dynamics. Relationships with stepfathers were often a point of stressto our female participants. Mothers were less likely to intervene and counseled theirchildren to “not start anything” or “ignore him” or move into a different house,which is largely what they did.

For males “being mean to me” incidents all involved some kind of physicalconfrontation either in the form of being bullied or acting in reaction to beingbullied. Bullying, especially in school, was noted by several youth as one of thebiggest problems kids face. Adults, especially school staff, are consistently per-ceived as doing virtually nothing to address the problem. Youth are largely leftto work it out amongst themselves. In some ways, physical confrontation wasaccepted as a necessary part of growing into manhood, which required that boysbecome strong and able to withstand trials. One older boy explained how he wasinvolved in this toughening-up process for a younger cousin:

He asked me, “why do you keep picking on me?” and I’m like, “to make you

strong” and he’s like, “I already am trying to get stronger. I joined basketball team,

see that. . .” [and I said], “I’m trying to make you stronger in your mind and

physically.”

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Being physically challenged also gave young men opportunities to prove themselvesand to gain respect from others in the process. An older boy explains how thisworked for him:

Interviewer: Okay. So I’m wondering how did you get through that. Everybody’s

picking on you and teasing you and wanting to fight.

Older boy: Fight back.

Interviewer: You fight back, okay.

Older boy: Tease back.

Interviewer: Fight back and tease back.

Older boy: Then through the middle I made friends.

In another case, a young boy (who is physically large) did not want to fight backeven though his uncle and grandparents suggested it. Boys in the community con-tinually picked on him until he fought back. After that, the bullying lessenedgreatly.

Across virtually all of the youth narratives, participants responded to hardshipthrough self-reliance. An older girl describes how she would handle a personalchallenge saying, “if something [bad] really did happen, I’d have to wait until itdid to figure out what I would do, but I think my first reaction would be to justsnap back.” This ability to respond and not be damaged by hardship was oftenassociated with the survival or subsistence skills of Inupiaq who have demonstratedsuch capacity for generations.

Social ecology creates specific patterns of youth resilience

When faced with difficulties, several kinds of resources seemed to be important foryoung Inupiat people to feel capable and to enact resilient strategies. Peer relation-ships are primary sites to test one’s character, be dependable and develop aware-ness of others, and in so doing, become more resilient. Connections with olderpeople who could serve as mentors (or just background supporters) gave our youngparticipants clear ideas that they could get through difficulties, while also present-ing them with examples of how to do so. In these ways, strong social networksincreased youth adaptability by expanding young people’s opportunities to man-euver when facing challenges. Lastly, positioning oneself as cultural, as having ameaningful claim to Inupiaq culture, was a way to evoke a sense of strength andcapability in youth narratives. As in the metaphor of resilience as a willow in thewind, cultural rootedness, several participants believe, enables youth to havestrength to withstand difficulty in versatile ways. Each of these structural sourceswill be described as a facet of the local, social ecology that facilitates youthresilience.

Friendships with peers give young people opportunities to, among other things,be responsible and responsive to others. Young people’s narratives featured theserelationships and through them, our participants learned about themselves.

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One youth leader described how she likes “being somebody people look up to.” Bydescribing themselves in relation to their peers, they reflected a situated sense of selfand their capabilities. Parents and other adult family members often stayed outsideof these relationships (with the exception of mothers actively intervening amongyounger girls). This freedom allowed children to take on increasingly more respon-sibilities for others, and to ask for something similar in return. In several cases,participants said that they make sure that their siblings or good friends/cousinshave money, get up in time for school, do their homework, or are protected fromothers. In the following example, an older male participant describes his relation-ship with his good friend and cousin,

I go there every day, it’s like my home . . . . So whenever I get money, it’s all about

[name of friend] and his younger brother; I took care of him as much as possible.

They’re like brothers to me. I take care of them no matter what, fight for them and ask

him if he could help me out on something. He won’t really want to do it, but he’ll still

do it anyway because he knows that I’d do the same for him.

Building reciprocal bonds, being responsible to others and sustaining support,young people find new capacity through their friendships. Good friends aretalked about in terms of adopted kin, people who are close enough to be consideredfamily.

Families (with homes that provide space to be out of harm’s way) enabledparticipants to offer different forms of support to their friends. Several youthtalked about either going to a friend’s house to escape home when a parent wasdrinking or offering their friends a place they could go to when their homes wereunsafe. A younger boy explains, “Whenever his dad’s not doing good [drinking], hecomes to our house and we take care of him.” This household mobility enabledyoung people to leave difficult situations with minimal or no negative repercus-sions. In fact, “living somewhere else for a while” was common strategy for dealingwith interpersonal conflict. As one older boy explains, “. . . so I stayed there [withmy cousins] for a while. I lived there because I often move out and then in with mymom because me and her don’t get along so great. So we take breaks.” Having aplace to go to avoid interpersonal strife increased young people’s ability to navigatehardship in a way that felt independent. A younger boy explains, “Every time mymom leaves, he [dad] goes and drinks, but I promised myself every time he getsdrunk, I’m just going to go over to [best friend and cousin] and see if I can stay athis house.” As this quote illustrates, our young participants position themselves asactively working around problems they cannot solve, utilizing resources madeavailable through social networks. This kind of perceived self-reliance—a charac-teristic that was reflected and lauded in many youth narratives—is made possibleby the openness of many homes.

Developing and sustaining connections with others can, as our participants’stories suggest, expand one’s opportunities for escape, for travel, and for skill-building. Young people described visiting adopted kin in the lower 48 states

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because they were missed, learning how to fix engines because of a relationshipwith a mechanic, and getting to go out on the land with other families becausethey had developed strong, social ties. Beyond this, the variety and kindsof adult support seems to matter greatly for youth in terms of gaining facil-ity with diverse “strategies for action” they can deploy in response to difficul-ties. A few of our participants had large adoptive and biological kin networksthat offered them support in being self-reliant, responsible, and extremelycapable.

For example, one younger girl we interviewed has many layers of social support,and confidently handles a myriad of difficulties. When identifying a challenge, shetalks about being harassed by several of her teachers in school. One of the teachersphysically grabbed her in class. When asked how she dealt with it, she details howshe told her mom, and then brought it up again during a parent–teacher confer-ence. Although supportive, her mother did not feel like she could influence thesituation. Instead, her mom “would just tell me to be strong with it and just try toavoid her as much as I can.” Although the participant reported that, “I tried[to follow this advice], but she would just keep hitting and she was a very abusiveteacher. I didn’t want to go to school though. After she choked me, I didn’t want togo to school.” Even in this terrible situation, the participant was still able to getgood grades. She did so by reclaiming (albeit not overtly) some power in the situ-ation. She explains, “I gave her a nickname. . . the big fat evil meatloaf because shehad these giant craters in her face, yuck.” When she got As on her report carddespite this treatment, her aunt sent her a care package, and her parents let her usetheir snow-go. Although the adult support—evident in this case—was not enoughto change the school situation for this participant, she felt supported enough toendure it, find a semblance of control (over what she called her teacher), andaccomplish her goal (good grades).

A child’s autonomy is sometimes clearly honed purposefully by family members.For example, one of our younger male participants talked about how his dadtaught him how to be on the land, keep himself safe, and hunt by giving himincrementally more responsibility. When he was little, he was given a BB gun tohunt rabbits outside of town. Later he got a 22-gage, and now has a rifle forhunting caribou (all milestones he noted on his life timeline, a requested drawingdone during the interview depicting important life events). Before being allowed tohunt alone with his 15-year-old cousin, our 12-year-old participant had to pass ahunter safety course and be able to work on small engines. In a story about gettinghis snow-go stuck in powdery snow 30 miles from town, he described how he andhis cousin had thoughtfully covered the snow machine to protect it from possiblelooters in case they had to leave it behind. The participant described how they “justsat there for a couple of hours thinking it would be hard” before figuring out theycould handle the situation. He said that he was not worried because he had abackpack full of supplies needed to survive, just like his father carried. Strongintergenerational ties prepared this participant (and others) to stay calm andthoughtfully handle a difficult situation.

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“Being cultural,” in many youth narratives, was illustrated by participating insubsistence activities with parents or other family members, and young peopleassociated these experiences with a sense of being special, living right, and show-ing cultural continuity by their subsistence skills. When the interviewer asks ayounger boy what “being Inupiaq means” to him, he says: “It means a lotbecause I get to hunt and do lots of stuff that most people don’t get to do.”Youth narratives reflected doing and therefore being Inupiaq. More than anyother kind of activity, young people talked about their parents actively teachingthem how to do subsistence and through this, how to be in the world. Oneyounger boy explains, “My dad taught me how to gut [a caribou]. . .. [as ateacher,] he’s very patient.” This participant demonstrated patience while waitingfor ducks and even when not reacting to mean peers. Hunting and butcheringwere the skills most often taught to young people by their parents or other olderfamily members. Young people had many stories of learning particular ways tocut fish, smell a rutting moose, hunt beluga, or act around bear. These skills andexperiences imbued youth with a particular ontology, and signified “culture aslived” in virtually all the narratives. One older girl explains: “My papa. He taughtme when I was like 4 years old how to clean out seal intestines. So I’ve alwayslived with that.”

Not only does the act of doing subsistence provide an opportunity for trad-itional learning, it also gives a sense of wellbeing. In troubling times, several par-ticipants described being taken out on the land and feeling better as a consequence.In the following example, a participant describes a time when he felt hopeless andunable to change the interpersonal problems he faced. His Ana (grandmother)came to his aid.

Interviewer: How did she help you?

Older boy: She took me out camping for over the weekend.

Interviewer: Tell me what that was like.

Older boy: I went hunting, boating, went to [another village], fishing and basically

that’s all we did, swimming.

Interviewer: Did that help you?

Older boy: Yes.

Interviewer: How did it help you?

Older boy: Calmed my nerves down to stop thinking about everything.

Bringing this sense of wellbeing back to everyday, village life can be challenging toyoung people. Some older youth (particularly older girls), are actively findingmeaningful ways to “do culture” outside of traditional, subsistence-based activities.In the following excerpt, an older girl accomplishes this by broadening her con-ception of what is cultural.

To me [culture] means having hunting skills that shows up a lot and like picking

berries and like harvest skills and teaching kids how to do stuff. It doesn’t matter

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like what you’re teaching, but as long as it’s positive and you’re making a good

impression on the next generation then I think that’s an Inupiat thing that we all do.

This particular way to be (and do) Inupiaq was evident in some young people’snarratives, and provided them with a sense of purpose that guided their actions andresilience strategies. A different older girl described, “I want to give back to mycommunity. I want to give back to my people.” This cultural obligation to giveback was mentioned by several young people as a means to “do culture.” In thisway, young people (mostly women) in our study consciously claimed their culturalidentities by shifting the focus from subsistence to the values underlying traditionalactivities. This kind of interpretation can widen the scope of what is considered“cultural,” and can therefore offer young people a larger cultural repertoire to useas they face difficulties on their pathways to adulthood.

Discussion

As the focal point of this study, Inupiaq youth narratives of resilience signifyculturally salient understandings, values, and practices which are available andmeaningful to our participants (Gone et al., 1999) and which they employ to over-come challenges. When we consider these across Inupiat youth narratives, we beginto understand how local culture influences the “general way of organizing action”(Swidler, 1986, p. 277; see also Bourdieu, 1977). In the study community, theintensity, variety, and relative health of participants’ social ties seem to be a contextfor developing more robust resilience strategies. These cherished relationships pro-vided young people with a platform for securing reciprocal relations, feeling sup-ported, gaining access to a host of resources, and for seeing and trying out newways to be in the world. Importantly, having a variety of relationships offeredyouth opportunities to develop a sense that they mattered to others (and viceversa) in a myriad of ways. In many stories, young people actively fostered theirconnection to others in their family and/or community, and through this, estab-lished for themselves meaningful ways to contribute (Baskin, Wampold,Quintana, & Enright, 2010; Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Being important toothers seems to be a common way for young people in the study community toarticulate how they (and their actions) exemplify important shared principles—likecommitment to others—and do so in a way that is culturally and socially conson-ant (Theron et al., 2011).

Building and maintaining relationships with others, then, seem to be the scaf-folding upon which young people construct their identities and, in turn, their resili-ence. This process is shaped by social interaction and social practice (Hammack,2008). Young people’s narratives emphasize their self-reliance and capabilities toprotect and “be there for” others. The kinds of support received from others wasless explicit, but was nonetheless central to many resilience stories. Relationshipswith others in the community establish the bounds of possibilities, in material andaffective terms. For instance, a youth could leave a troubling household if welcome

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in other homes. Escaping into the country was a viable option when someoneincluded a young person. Effective strategies for handling problems were clear ifan adult showed young people how to do so. Without this guidance, and back-upresources enlisted through their agency, young people’s narratives were less certainabout how to be strong and capable in the face of hardship.

This kind of certainty is also engendered through a sense of cultural continuity.A recurring narrative links participants’ sense of cultural affiliation with their safepassage into adulthood. The cultural tropes deployed by youth provide glimpsesinto how they are building cultural resonance into their autobiographical identitynarratives (McAdams, 1996). Research supports the importance of cultural identityassociations for indigenous youth wellness (e.g., Alderson, 2000; Kirmayer et al.,2011; Lehti, Niemela, Hoven, Mandell, & Sourander, 2009; Wexler, 2009b), buthas not yet articulated how the conception of culture is deployed in ways thatcontribute to these processes. This study shows that it is important for youth tobe able to flexibly construct and utilize cultural and personal identity narratives torespond to diverse situations.

This form of resilience was more readily available and accessible to girls(Geldens & Bourke, 2008). Girls and young women shared stories of hunting cari-bou and taking on public leadership roles that would have traditionally beenoccupied by males. Several young women talked about needing to support theirfamilies, and younger girls were finding creative ways to be allowed to go sealhunting, formally an exclusively male activity. Resilience narratives of female par-ticipants did not consistently follow their prescribed gender roles. Girls and youngwomen actively and creatively reworked the socially prescribed gender identities tofit their priorities and their lives. For boys and young men, notions of manhoodwere more strictly regulated and tightly bound, conforming to local cultural expect-ations of strength and stoicism. All the boys in our study reflected these attributesor expressed stress because they did not. Boys and young men who fit snugly withintheir community’s gendered expectations, demonstrated robust resilience strategiesand an unwavering belief in their capacity to withstand hardship.

This finding raises the question: What is it about the social ecology that facili-tates this creative endeavor for girls and forecloses it for boys? From our partici-pants, we understand that girls are often encouraged to broaden their aptitudes inmultiple settings by taking on new tasks, even those not traditionally done by girlsand women. Girls in our study were taught how to hunt large game, for instance,and participated in sharing rituals associated with the distribution of one’s firstcatch. Their “gender transgressions” were thus publically acknowledged andlauded. In contrast, boys in our study, talked about having a limited number ofoptions for handling their problems, which seemed to be shaped by gender roles.For instance, to prevent further bullying, boys needed to “prove their mettle” byfighting back. Other means seemed to be ineffective, and sometimes made bullyingworse. As this suggests, young Inupiat are differently drawing—in structurallypositioned ways—from the situated, cultural scripts or master narratives thatare circulating in their particular social ecology (Hammack, 2010; Thorne &

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McLean, 2003; Thorne & Nam, 2007). The larger context shapes young people’sunderstanding of their communities, and in so doing, frames and provisions theiropportunities for resilience.

The community-level scripting of youth experiences shapes more than genderroles, and influences young people’s characterization of their everyday lives. Forinstance, boredom was the most often used descriptor of the study community byyouth. The modern experience of having too much empty time “to be bored”introduces an ontological state that marks village life, in general, and that isassociated with social ills such as substance abuse and “getting into trouble.”Jervis, Spicer, Manson, and Team (2003) found similar associations in anAmerican Indian reservation community. Here, the village is linked to a lackof opportunity, pettiness, bullying and interpersonal strife: all of which wereframed as antithetical to more traditional ways of being. This “existential bore-dom” can be understood to reflect a “deeper crisis of meaning” (Musharbash,2007, p. 312). In her study of boredom in an Aboriginal community, Musharbashwrites:

[B]oredom is generated at the intersection of “the old ways” and (post)colonial (time)

disciplines, but for it to be experienced, a lack in meaning needs to be felt. This

happens when the values underlying [local, indigenous] ways of being in the world

and the world, encountered through settlement realities, are recognized as coming

together in a “meaningless fit.” (p. 315)

The existential boredom associated with town in this study was explicitly con-trasted with traditional living both in the past and present, while in the country.The “not bored” narratives reflected meaningful engagement with mainly subsist-ence and cultural activities, and were associated with fulfillment: a sense of calm,wellbeing, strength, survival, and continuity with one’s heritage. Young peopledescribed being better people, acting more responsible and less petty, and feelingmore self-efficacious by “doing culture” and being cultural on the land. These kindsof “fulfillment narratives” were markedly absent from those depicting villageexperiences.

Interestingly, young people described their reduced access to cultural pursuits asan unintended consequence of maturation. Growing up, as our participants por-trayed, involved competing interests (upward bound, sports, peer engagements),which became more pronounced as teenagers, and often times replaced time spentat camp or doing subsistence activities. These narratives described how after elem-entary school, they no longer had “Inupiaq Days,” or were too old to go to thelargest cultural camp in the region. For some, they no longer had grandparentswho were able to take them to the country, and so no longer went. Such accountsreflected a sense of inevitability, of growing out of “doing culture.” This renderingof “the problem” stands in stark contrast to how adults and Elders describe “cul-ture loss” (Wexler, 2006), and this difference suggests one way that culture changeis manifested at this historic moment (Arnett, 2002).

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The “relationship between a ‘master narrative’ and a personal narrative of iden-tity provides direct access to the process of social reproduction and change”(Hammack, 2008, p. 224) because it occurs at the intersection of personal, cultural,and social meaning-making (Chase, 2005). Our analysis of Inupiaq youth narra-tives offers insight into young people’s historic positioning (Arnett, 2002;Hammack, 2008) because it contextualizes some dominant influences shaping thisgeneration’s priorities and sense-making processes. For instance, Inupiat youngpeople were taught to appreciate the advantage of attending school in theirhome community, being encouraged to learn Inupiaq dancing and language, andreceiving cultural programs in school, experiences their Elders never got. Inupiaqyouth, then, consider access to cultural practices as a privilege, one that otherAmericans do not have. This conception portrays cultural opportunities asvalued offerings, instead of indispensible fundamentals. As they mature, youthdedicated more time to pursuits they believe have more relevance to their future.Thus, young people themselves are “losing culture” to make time for more press-ing, modern demands of growing up.

Young people’s narratives of cultural forfeiture are very different from thosereflected in adult narratives of forced culture loss (Wexler, 2006), and signal tensionrelated to the competing value systems youth must navigate. The narrative of oldergenerations considers the role of discrimination and institutional oppression as thereal harbinger of culture loss. The LSC members talked about how “Western”ideas have infiltrated young people’s perspectives of the world, and in so doing,have fostered confusion and irregular (sometimes wrong) cultural understandings.For instance, youth narratives do not acknowledge how historical injustice con-tributes to their need for explicit “cultural activities.” A male member stated, “Wedon’t control our education system which is why it is even more important that weprovide youth the knowledge, skills, and training to navigate their true reality.”This reality would include an awareness of ongoing colonialism and could helpyouth develop nuanced ways to find their way into adulthood.

Conclusion

Like willows that bend in the Arctic wind and remain standing, Inupiat youthdescribe more flexible patterns of resilience when they are culturally grounded.As one young women captured her idea of resilience as “being responsible, respect-ful, trying to keep the tradition alive.” This process involves adopted kin or familymembers who mediate young people’s access to cultural and material assets. Ourparticipants emphasized the importance of taking care of others and “giving backto the community.” Being “in the country” linked youth to traditional ways ofbeing that profoundly shifted how youth felt in relation to themselves, to others,and the world. The vast majority of participants’ fulfillment narratives centered ondoing subsistence and/or cultural activities. Similarly, young people were morelikely to demonstrate versatility in their resilience strategies when deploying coher-ent self-narratives that reflected novel yet culturally resonant styles. Young women

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were more likely to reconfigure notions of culture and gender identity in ways thathelped them meet challenges in their lives. Lastly, generational differences,described in our discussion of culture loss, signal particular ways that this gener-ation’s historical and political positioning influences their understanding and accessto cultural resources. This perspective also suggests potentially fruitful ways forolder generations to guide young people on their path to adulthood.

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Lisa M. Wexler, PhD, MSW, is an associate professor in the Department of PublicHealth at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr. Wexler’s collaborativeresearch aims to deepen our understanding of indigenous youth suicide and resili-ence in ways that offer possibilities for local action. She is currently the PrincipalInvestigator of one site in a National Science Foundation study—CircumpolarIndigenous Pathways to Adulthood—featured here, which focused on youth resili-ence in five northern communities, and a dissemination grant focused on digitaland participatory methods. Dr. Wexler is lead evaluator for three locally drivenwellness programs in Northwest Alaska, and is the Co-Principal Investigator of asmall exploratory study focused on depictions and narratives of wellness for urbanmen of color. Her published works focus on the intersection of heritage and health(particularly suicide and resilience), cross-cultural issues in mental health services,and collaborative and digital research methods.

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