American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Objectives: Self-compassion is associated empirically with well-being among Western populations and conceptually with traditional Indigenous wellness concepts of self-kindness, mindfulness, and common humanity, suggesting self-compassion may be useful when designing mental wellness interventions with Indigenous communities. This systematic review sought to explore how self-compassion relates to well-being within Indigenous communities and the possible mechanisms at work. 

Methods: We completed a thematic analysis of qualitative research with Indigenous youth and adults participating in interventions that promote aspects of self-compassion and outcomes related to well-being. 

Results: A link between self-compassion and well-being was revealed through three themes: connection (new relationships, stronger relationships, and spirituality), enhanced awareness (of mind, body, and environment), and self-empowerment. We discuss parallels among these themes and traditional Indigenous concepts of wellness, including the Mitakuye Oyasin prayer of the Lakota, The Seven Grandfather Teachings of the Anishinaabe, and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit.   

Conclusions: A focus on self-compassion may be useful in promoting well-being among Indigenous individuals and communities. Larger culture-specific and systematic studies on self-compassion, especially with Indigenous youth, are needed. We suggest that a Mi’kmaq Two-Eyed Seeing approach may capture the synergy between Western and Indigenous conceptions of self-compassion as Indigenous communities grapple with urgent mental health and suicide crises. 

Native Community Development Financial Institutions (NCDFIs) play a vital role in extending credit to underserved Native communities, yet there is no systematic overview in the existing literature of the lending approaches of NCDFIs. Analyzing original interviews with NCDFI leaders, we unveil the core practices and modes of operation in the NCDFI industry. We find that NCDFIs prioritize comprehensive goals, form strategic partnerships, customize financial and development products and services, and employ inclusive metrics of success. Emphasizing a person-centric approach, NCDFIs aim to enhance financial inclusion while empowering Native communities. Our analysis underscores NCDFIs' crucial role in fostering financial resilience while maintaining commitment to cultural compatibility.

Pan-Indianism is an ambiguous and controversial concept. There is confusion regarding what the concept means and what purposes it serves. Some scholars describe resistance as the core tenet of pan-Indianism, focusing on the historical intertribal alliances formed to fight colonial powers. Others argue that it homogenizes Indigenous cultures and perpetuates stereotypes and appropriation. Despite these discrepancies, pan-Indianism remains consistently associated with urban spaces. This article explores this association by tracing pan-Indianism to an area of scholarship known as acculturation studies and argues that pan-Indianism functions as a grammar of colonialism. 

Northern Plains inter-Indigenous relations have been affected by racist, gendered, heteronormative colonial laws, policies, fantasies, discourses, and geopolitical borders. American and Canadian settler statecraft apparatuses, which include federal statutes and acts, have worked to codify Indigenous peoples into “monoethnic identities” (Vrooman 2012, 15) as grounds for defining indigeneity, questioning legitimacy, managing populations, severing relationalities, stealing lands and resources, and mitigating Indigenous resistances. While Nêhiyaw scholar Rob Alexander Innes and settler scholar Nicholas P. Vrooman argue that the Iron Alliance—an economic, military and social confederacy comprising Northern Plains Nêhiyaw, Nakoda, Métis, and Anishinaabe multicultural bands (Innes 2021, 94) active from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries—has been broadly “overlooked by US scholars” (Vrooman 2012, 6), we affirm that Indigenous women and gender-diverse voices have been historically unheard and unseen between the lines of published Iron Alliance historiographies. Our research seeks to activate gendered inter-Indigenous networks, to reconceptualize critical borderland studies, and to situate place (in particular, Winnipeg) as a constellation of kinscapes. 

Apologies are politically fraught. The act of publicly naming an issue and offering an apology is something that is increasingly called for and received within Canadian federal politics. Prime ministers have increasingly engaged in apology work, particularly in relation to the ongoing impacts and consequences of settler colonialism. In the shadow of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Final Report, the necessity of owning and giving voice to responsibility for violence perpetrated by the Canadian state against Indigenous children, families, and nations is increasingly obvious. The spring and summer of 2021 have brought about the research (both ground- penetrating software and archival) to relocate suspected previously unrecorded and/or unmarked burials of Indigenous children on the grounds of former residential schools. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2008 apology for residential schools marked an important first apology by a sitting prime minister for residential schools. In 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered a more informal apology, in the aftermath of the research to relocate potential unmarked burial sites at residential schools. These two apologies offered by sitting Canadian prime ministers regarding residential schools occur on either side of the important event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, socially and politically coordinating the discourse of reconciliation. This research study examines the texts of the 2021 and 2008 public apologies for residential schools to render visible the often-disappeared patterns and conventions of the language and context of settler apology. This paper picks up the “age of apology” and questions whether the contemporary state responses to the suspected unmarked graves at residential schools demonstrate the continuation or the recession of the deployment of public apology as the major vehicle of settler colonial discourses of reconciliation. Ultimately, based on a comparison of these two apologies, this paper argues that official state apologies remain largely performative. Despite the transformative impacts of the commission, the “age of apology” persists, evidenced by similar strategies and discursive markers in apologies issued by prime ministers both before and after the commission and final report. This study examines the continuity of apology politics and the role these apologies hold in perpetuating settler obfuscation of responsibility in ongoing colonial violence.  

This study investigates the fundamental values, beliefs, and principles that guide the leadership of Native Hawaiian principals (poʻokumu) in Hawaiian-focused charter schools. Through an ethnographic case study approach, the lived experiences of seven poʻokumu/poʻokula (out of fourteen possible participants) were meticulously gathered via surveys and individual and group interviews and subjected to a thorough coding process. The research uncovered key themes in modern Kanaka ʻōiwi (Native Hawaiian) leadership. The study found that all participants prioritized the integration of ʻIke, ʻŌlelo, and Nohona Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian knowledge, language, and way of life) with academic content to educate their haumana (students). In addition, all principals emphasized haumana-centered learning, kaiāulu (community) collaboration and support, and transformational leadership. They highlighted the importance of developing kumu (teachers) to implement Hawaiian culture-based education. Furthermore, the principals underscored the concept of kuleana hana (sense of responsibility) as central to their leadership. These findings provide significant insights into Indigenous leadership and the role of culturally responsive education in Hawaiian-focused charter schools. The study's implications suggest that embracing Indigenous values and practices can enhance educational leadership and foster an environment that supports academic excellence, indigenous knowledge, and cultural preservation.

Henry R. Schoolcraft’s Algic Researches was the first significant collection of authentic Native American tales. However, it was so flawed that its import has been generally dismissed by scholars, who have shown more interest in critiquing Schoolcraft than in studying the stories themselves. It has long been known some of the manuscripts by William Johnston were in the Schoolcraft papers at the Library of Congress. I have now transcribed these and many others, restoring the originals modified by Schoolcraft for his books. The result is not only an opportunity to give credit to the Ojibwe-speaking mixed-blood collectors and translators of these tales but also to evaluate the modifications Schoolcraft made. It turns out most of the divergences from later professional collections are in the originals and cannot be attributed to Schoolcraftsmanship. One of the restored manuscripts, Chusco’s Shagwonabee as told to William Johnston in 1836, is included as an example.