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Training in Culturally Appropriate Interventions for Native Americans
Purpose
General ignorance about Indian culture, the reluctance of non-Indian providers to live in the isolated regions where most reservations are found, and the scarcity of Native American human services professionals have long made effective delivery of human services to Native Americans a rarity.
The human services faculty at Sinte Gleska University-the first tribally-chartered institution in the nation to award the bachelor's degree-believed that they could train their students to provide much-needed high quality, culturally sensitive human services to Indian communities.
Innovative Features
Sinte Gleska University is located on the Rosebud Sioux reservation in South Dakota, and serves the people of the Sicangu band of the Lakota. Aware that Sinte Gleska students often lack the resources to attend graduate school, the project's creators determined to revise the human services curriculum not only to provide culturally relevant knowledge but to train B.A. students to serve as mid-level professionals. In this respect the program departs from common practice in the field, which requires a graduate degree to deliver human services.
The original curriculum was traditional in style and reflected human services programs at non-Indian institutions. The revised curriculum requires each graduate to complete 38 hours in Indian studies, including classes in Lakota language, thought and philosophy; cultural and comparative healing; tribal laws, treaties and government; and issues of dependency among Native Americans.
Project staff undertook a systematic analysis of all course materials, assessing the reading level of each text and reviewing it for culturally inappropriate or offensive concepts. For example, many abnormal psychology texts point out that most societies pass through-and move beyond-an animistic phase. Staff worked with faculty to help students understand that the present-day Lakota belief in spirits does not render the believers either primitive or foolish.
In the counseling component of the degree, after completing the necessary courses students counsel each other, and then, under faculty supervision, the public. Each student works with one to three individual clients and one or two families before graduation.
To ensure that future human services providers have resolved their own personal issues and will not attempt to do so through their clients, all students are required to undergo 45 hours of personal counseling. The counseling is provided by two Native American clinical assistants, themselves graduates of the human services program. The aim of this intervention is not to identify pathologies, but to allow students to confront constructively the forces that shape their lives. With their counselor, students scrutinize their self-concepts, personal values, interpersonal styles, attitudes toward intimacy and sexuality, communication styles and skills, life and career choices, physical health and well-being, relationship to chemicals, and any personality issues and adjustment difficulties that may exist.
Because so few materials exist to assist in the delivery of services to Native Americans, project staff decided that it was essential to norm a variety of assessment instruments on the Lakota people. This would prevent the labeling of culture-specific responses as pathological, something that often happens when assessment is based on majority-oriented instruments and interpretations.
Project staff modified a structured interview of client history, an intercultural self-perception scale, a stress questionnaire, a strategic-approach-to-coping scale, a health questionnaire, a social adjustment self-report, and a substance abuse subtle screening inventory to render them more reflective of Indian experience.
Data for norming these instruments were gathered from three Lakota reservations by human services students and some community residents. Data collectors received training which included techniques for obtaining responses from traditional, elderly, or Lakota-speaking subjects. Their efforts yielded 898 completed questionnaires, each 34 pages long. Staff consider the cooperation in producing this volume of data one of the major successes of the project.
To strengthen knowledge and understanding of the Lakota culture among human services and university students, project staff organized a series of workshops in which Lakota elders, healers and cultural experts made presentations. Students learned first-hand about historical and contemporary cultural practices, ceremonies, legends, myths and tribal history. They also helped to prepare for and attended sun dances, powwows, sweat baths, naming ceremonies, and memorials. In addition, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the university conducted public awareness forums on such topics as sovereignty, education, self-determination, violence, and alcohol and chemical abuse.
Finally, project staff developed a model to help human services providers relate to and alleviate the problems of cultural minorities, specifically Native Americans. The model involves learning as much as possible about the cultural group to be served, especially its historical and contemporary struggles with the dominant society; becoming familiar with the group's ways of structuring time and interpersonal relationships, learning the appropriate cultural sequences for conducting business; and being visibly involved in the betterment of the community.
Evaluation and Project Impact
The project was assessed yearly by an external evaluator and, at its conclusion, was found to have met all its goals. Employers' evaluations of human services graduates were highly positive, especially regarding cultural awareness and sensitivity. Employees rated lower in their ability to work independently and with little structure, but this may simply reflect their status as newcomers to the job.
Lessons Learned
Initially, human services students resisted the counseling component of the curriculum. The sessions interfered with their schedules, and they felt anxious about confronting personal issues. They also feared that the information disclosed during counseling might be used to keep them from graduating. The project director and the clinical assistants reassured them that the counseling would be private and subject to ethics and rules of confidentiality and would not affect their academic progress but would improve their effectiveness with clients and their own well being. The counseling eventually became so successful that students who had completed the 45 hours often requested to continue, and students from other departments asked for services.
In one community, project staff and students encountered resistance to the collection of data for the norming of assessment instruments. They were given the access they needed, however, after they presented the project at a community meeting and explained how the data would be used. The initial reluctance is not surprising given that research or data collection on reservations has historically been more oriented toward improving the researcher's career prospects than the lives of the subjects. Project staff believe that the reason the project was generally accepted was because they were well known and trusted on the reservation. It is not possible to succeed in Native American communities unless one is clearly identified with efforts to reduce human suffering and improve opportunities.
One unanticipated problem arose when students began to analyze the questionnaires. Native Americans have difficulty generating hypotheses based on questionnaire scores, viewing this as unwarranted criticism or pathologizing. Staff attempted to address this by giving human services students a course on client assessment and explaining that assessment can reveal positive as well as negative traits.
Project Continuation
The revised human services curriculum has been approved and continues to be offered. The university has employed the clinical assistants, who were originally funded with grant monies, full time.
Dissemination and Recognition
Sinte Gleska's office of student services has been reorganized to incorporate the project model for all students of the university. The business department has created a major in tribal business and enterprise modeled on the human services curriculum. Other departments have adopted the use of community healers, elders and medicine people in instruction, and a Bush Foundation grant has allocated funds for furthering this process.
Project staff have answered requests for information from a number of institutions. Salish Kootenai and Lakota community colleges in particular have consulted on ways of making the curriculum more culturally sensitive.
Staff have made presentations to the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, the National Indian Education Association, the University of North Dakota Rural Health Issues program, the South Dakota Guidance Counselors' Association, the University of South Dakota psychology department, and the National Organization of Human Services Education.
Available Information
Further information may be obtained from:
Rodger Hornby
Human Services Department
Sinte Gleska University
Box 8
Mission, SD 57555
Telephone: 605-856-4891
[University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, New Jersey Dental School] [ Table of Contents ] [Tufts University]
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