Negotiating Pathways to Adulthood:
Social Change and Indigenous Culture in Five Circumpolar Communities
Lisa Wexler from the School of Public Health and Health Sciences is leading a multi-national, participatory research collaboration concerned with better understanding difficulties faced by early and late adolescents in five indigenous polar communities.
Previous studies of rapid social change, cultural disruption and identity issues in indigenous communities have documented significant social problems including substance abuse, violence and alarmingly high suicide rates among young people who face developmental problems up that are substantially different from parents and elders. Wexler’s project hopes to assist young people in these communities in understanding the complex social and psychological issues they face and developing culturally based strategies for resilience and individual and collective well-being. A principle element of this project will be the collection and dissemination of indigenous narratives to identify common sources of social stress and strategies for successful transition to adulthood.
One hundred young people from the Alaskan Inupiat and Yup’ik, Canadian Inuit, Norwegian Sami and Siberian Eveny communities will participate in the three year project. A group of international researchers and indigenous community leaders developed this collaboration in response to problems of community well-being identified in the 2004 Arctic Human Development Report and the 2007 Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic. The project aims to articulate specific processes involved in youth resilience, the ability to overcome acute and chronic difficulties in reaching healthy adulthood, and to identify family and community resources necessary to support youth development. The involvement of five communities creates opportunities for understanding common social stresses and a greater pool of narrative strategies for overcoming difficulties resulting from modern expectations in the face of such cultural disruptions as forced schooling, political domination and suppression of native languages.
