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...Alaska Natives remains underdeveloped. Further, the experience with alcohol research in Native communities, especially in Alaska, reveals a history of practices that have alienated communities (Manson, 1989).
Implicit in the findings generated by alcohol research has been a subtle message about self and community identity for Native people. The research and the media's reporting of it focused on high rates of alcoholism and consequent negative impacts. The dominant narrative (Rappaport, 2000) suggests Native people who drink are alcoholic, alcohol abuse is inevitable, and recovery or protection is rare. This is reinforced through oversimplification of complex genetic theory (Tarter & Vanyukov, 1997) and stereotypes that most Native people have a drinking problem. The narrative ignores the unheard narratives of sobriety and healing among Alaska Natives that celebrate strength and resiliency, along with findings that estimate abstinence rates for American Indians and Alaska Natives that approach 50%, a rate two times the U.S. general population (Levy & Kunitz, 1974).
Past research efforts with Native people have rarely asked for their participation in their design, conduct, and interpretation. Results have been published with scant useful feedback in practices Smith (1999) has described as "colonizing." Guidelines for American Indian and Alaska Native research now highlight community involvement (Council of National Psychological Associations for the Advancement of Ethnic Minority Interests, 2000) and Native ownership of research process and outcomes (Alaska Native Science Commission, 2001a, 2001b). Similarly, implicit in community psychology's empowerment agenda is a view of research as collaborative.
The People Awakening Project is a collaborative relationship between community members and university scientists (Reason & Bradbury, 2001)
born out of a history of conflict, the prehistory of the project (Sarason, 1971). The project developed over 4 years into an effort to identify protective and resiliency factors among Alaska Natives who recover from or do not abuse alcohol, using an approach grounded within an Alaska Native cultural worldview (Hazel & Mohatt, 2001). Our approach drew from community psychology perspectives that attend to the context of community (Sarason, 1971) emphasizes empowerment (Rappaport, 1987; Wallerstein & Bernstein, 1994) and the use of participatory action research approaches (Fals Borda, 2001; Gaventa, 1988). This required building relationships in which community members who have been the objects of representational knowledge reflect with the researchers as equal partners, shaping and constructing the research questions, methods, interpretations, and conclusions. This imbues knowledge with the meaning of the participants. It is intended to build conscientization (Friere, 1970), wherein knowledge is emancipatory (Fals Borda, 2001) and generated in a process of empowering communities.
Emphasis on understanding context in community work becomes even more important as community psychologists work cross-culturally. There is growing awareness of the need for researchers to attend to ways culture influences the choice of research questions, methods, and interpretations (Matsumoto, 1994; Montero, 1994; Orlandi, Weston, & Epstein, 1992), and shapes the research process or various research paradigms (Chataway, 1997; Santiago-Rivera, Morse, Hunt, & Lickers, 1998; Tandon, Azelton, Kelly, & Strickland, 1998). From our experience, researchers must closely attend to their own values and beliefs when they are shaped by a Western scientific paradigm. The following case study delineates the struggles and tensions we experienced in creating a culturally anchored (Hughes, Seidman, & Williams, 1993) approach to participatory research. We present the story chronologically. In so doing, we hope to provide the reader with a sense of discomfort, unknowing, and discovery that has characterized our process. Our story is also intended to highlight our appreciation and awareness of the consequential validity of the project's findings in creating community-sanctioned knowledge (Messick, 1995).
PEOPLE AWAKENING ORIGINS AND CONTEXT
In fall of 1995, a 2-day conference in Anchorage, Alaska, brought nationally prominent alcohol researchers to Alaska to share the current state of knowledge on the etiology, treatment, and prevention of alcoholism. Genetic and other biological research, as well as social and clinical research on alcohol and alcoholism funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was presented, with special emphasis on research on American Indian and Alaska Native populations. The audience included academics, researchers, service providers, and members of various Alaska Native organizations. Given that one of the last large research studies of alcohol use in Alaska--the Barrow Alcohol Study--ended in significant conflict (Manson, 1989), enormous suspicion existed among the Alaska Native participants that researchers would violate the trust of Native communities. The researchers shared their research with the media, which led to a newspaper article presenting results that had not been reviewed by the community. The reporting of the results in this manner implied to the people of Barrow that they had been labeled a problem. They felt stigmatized. Many of the people of Barrow and the statewide Native community felt that the researchers had violated the trust that they had put in them to share all results first with them. This led many in the Native community to doubt that research on alcohol would result in respectful treatment of communities and that they could trust the words of researchers. Those of us interested in doing research on alcohol abuse had to face this legacy of distrust. The presentations at the conference did little to dispel that suspicion. Many Alaska Natives, and others in the audience, perceived the discourse as dominated by one-way communication and a deficit focus.
What was clear from this experience was that the social organization of the conference, which was embedded within the culture of the scientific academy, was not "communicatively competent" (Cazden, John, & Hymes, 1972) for Alaska Native participants. It communicated the perspectives and values of the alcohol research community as much as the results of the research. These values include the belief that for research to be "scientific" it must arise out of a particular paradigm, be defined and controlled by the researcher, and involves minimal input from research participants other than as subjects. Could common ground between indigenous and research communities develop to allow for a dialogue from which cultural perspectives could emerge and shape the research process?
A month following the Anchorage meeting the first two authors, both Euro-American university faculty, met with a small group of Alaska Natives (who were not researchers but had significant experience in alcohol recovery or mental health programs) and one Euro-American (who had been involved for decades with Native alcohol programs) to discuss this question and possible future research. Over many later meetings, the members of this group became our coresearchers--the project's coordinating council. As the project progressed, we added additional representation from all the tribal groups. (3)
During the 1st year of the project, the first two authors listened and translated ideas into potential research questions, methodologies, and potential funding avenues, along with the limitations of each. We worked on consensus, as it is most characteristic of Alaska Native cultural practices. It was important for facilitators of this process to make sure every-one was allowed time to speak to an issue and given enough time for contemplation. Discussions were often long and decisions sometimes made over several meetings. Consequently, the research process timeframe expanded with both positive and negative consequences. On the positive side, this provided the context for community ownership through a culturally based communicative process. On the negative side, from the view of some in the scientific academy this reduces the rapidity of publishing both...
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