Amplifying the Voices of Indigenous Elders through Community Arts and Narrative Inquiry: Stories of Oppression, Psychosocial Suffering, and Survival

Abstract

Highlights Community psychology can contribute to healing and cultural renewal for indigenous communities. Storytelling through community arts practice is used to witness Elder stories. Narrative inquiry shows the ongoing effects of colonisation and coloniality. Narrative inquiry shows the various ways people resist and survive oppression. Decolonial approaches are vital to the goals of critical community psychology.

The development of group healing storytelling model in multicultural counselling services in Indonesian schools: Examination of disciplinary cases

“…The counsellee (student) also plays a role in telling stories to solve problems and achieve maximum results [54]. This type aims to help participants achieve greater satisfaction and actualisation [55,56]. Healing storytelling can broaden the view on different human condition.…”

Working Together to Advance Indigenous Interests with Community Psychology

“…The authors in this special issue refreshingly reflected on dimensions of research often omitted from the literature, and from the diverse relational arrangements they described, we can hear multiple perspectives contributing to a richer conversation in Community Psychology about how researchers, practitioners, and institutions (e.g., the Society for Community Research and Action) might think differently about the relational contexts of community research and action so as to better inform future work with Indigenous communities. For example, how might the responsibilities of Community Psychologists be differently construed if attention to relational context was oriented toward responding to common Indigenous cultural sensibilities (e.g., Parker et al., ) versus sociopolitical interests of particular Indigenous nations (e.g., Quayle & Sonn, ; Fraser, Hunter, Lemay, & Splicer, )? Further engagement in these conversations can deepen our understanding of Community Psychology's foundational principles (e.g., “sociocultural competence”, “reflective practice”) and their relevance to Indigenous community research and action.…”

“…Research teams working with the White Mountain Apache Tribe in Arizona (Cwik et al., ) and Yup'ik communities in Alaska (Rasmus, Charles, et al., ), for example, invited elders to provide this context, which was then synthesized to inform suicide prevention interventions. Comparatively, rather than synthesize community member accounts, researchers working with the Noongar in Western Australia (Quayle & Sonn, ) and the Aaniih (Gros Ventres) of Fort Belknap, Montana (Gone, ), offered in‐depth analyses of narrative forms used to communicate local understandings of this context to glean additional insights into its relevance for understanding community life today. By situating community members as authorities over their own experiences, these projects were better able to infuse existing bodies of knowledge with Indigenous peoples’ self‐determined representations of community life.…”

“…While one article detailed an Indigenous language education pilot program for K‐12 teachers‐in‐training to highlight language learning as a key pathway toward community wellness (Jacob et al., ), contributions to this special issue frequently engaged Indigenous languages as integral to knowledge production or dissemination. Indigenous language terms and phrases were often used in defining problems and solutions for community wellness (e.g., Cwik et al., ; Rasmus, Charles, et al., ), and on two occasions, analysis of language practices (e.g., storytelling) enabled researchers to illuminate less readily apparent dimensions of community life (e.g., Gone, ; Quayle & Sonn, ).…”

Community Psychology and Indigenous Peoples

“…Quayle and Sonn () discuss an extensive long‐term project in the remote areas of Australia: “Amplifying the Voices of Indigenous Elders through Community Arts and Narrative Inquiry: Stories of Oppression, Cultural Continuity and Survival.” Through the analysis of stories and interviews, these researchers demonstrate how the documentation of narratives becomes an opportunity for understanding contemporary impacts of a colonizing history, and the continuation of colonialism, as well as an opportunity to reclaim and heal from those histories.…”