Indigenous Emotional Economies In Alaska: Surviving Youth In The Village

Abstract

According to the Status of Alaska Natives Report 2004 produced by the Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska Anchorage, Native youth in rural Alaska experience significant mental health disparity. Suicide rates for Alaska Native youth are the highest in the nation, and substance abuse, social misconduct and teenage pregnancy rates are also much higher among the rural, indigenous population in Alaska. These disparate rates have caused many to ask; what is going on with the youth in the villages today? This dissertation reports on research conducted to help answer that question, and identify local intervention strategies for youth growing up today in the villages. The research for this dissertation was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (1R34MH073601-01), and supported by the University of Alaska Fairbanks at the Center for Alaska Native Health Research, Institute of Arctic Biology. The study used a community-based participatory research approach and ethnographic methods to explore the affective lives of youth in Athabascan villages in Alaska. This dissertation is a contemporary ethnography of life in "the vill" from a youth perspective. Findings from the research demonstrate a model of Athabascan mental health based on the concept of an indigenous emotional economy. Athabascan survival has always required both technical skills to provide for the material necessities of life and emotional skills to support social life. In that sense the economy has also always been an emotional economy. As the balance between the need for technical and emotional survival skills shifted, the lives of young people have become increasingly focused on their relationships in the village. The contemporary social problems that youth experience growing up in the village reflect the changed and changing nature of their emotional decision-making in the context of the relationships that contribute most directly to their social status and survival. In an emotional economy individuals must adapt strategies for surviving feelings. This study provides information that could be used to create or tailor intervention strategies in the rural villages to the local models of emotion, behavior and mental health.