With a Spirit that Understands: Reflections on a Long‐term Community Science Initiative to End Suicide in Alaska

Abstract

Highlights• Long-term CBPR requires preparation and resolution of crises when we lose key partners over time.• Relational cycles are a natural part of a CBPR process and impact upon the research in keys ways.• Long-term community-based participatory research allows the spirit to come into the science.Abstract This retrospective analysis of a long-term community-based participatory research (CBPR) process spans over two decades of work with Alaska Native communities. A call to action from Alaska Native leadership to create more effective strategies to prevent and treat youth suicide and alcohol misuse risk initiated a response from university researchers. This CBPR process transformed into a collaborative effort to indigenously drive and develop solutions through research. The People Awakening project started our team on this translational and transformational pathway through community intervention science in the Central Yup'ik region of Alaska. We examine more deeply the major episodes and their successes and struggles in maintaining a long-term research relationship between university researchers and members of Yup'ik Alaska Native communities. We explore ways that our CBPR relationship has involved negotiation and engagement with power and praxis, to deepen and focus attention to knowledge systems and relational elements. This paper examines these deeper, transformative elements of our CBPR relationship that spans histories, cultures, and systems. Our discussion shares vignettes from academic and community perspectives to describe process in a unique collaboration, reaching to sometimes touch upon rare ground in emotions, tensions, and triumphs over the course of a dozen grants and twice as many years. We conclude by noting how there are points where, in a long-term CBPR relationship, transition out of emergence into coalescing and transformation can occur.Keywords American Indian and Alaska Native Community-based participatory research indigenous intervention science indigenous knowledge ✉ Stacy M. Rasmus

Working Together to Advance Indigenous Interests with Community Psychology

“…These models include, among others, Community‐Based Participatory Research (Wallerstein, Duran, Oetzel, & Minkler, ), Tribal Participatory Research (Fisher & Ball, ), Two‐Eyed Seeing (Bartlett, Marshall, & Marshall, ), and Decolonizing Research (e.g., Smith, ). Articles in this special issue feature a variety of collaborative Indigenous community‐research arrangements, some spanning multiple decades (see Cwik et al., ; Kading & Walls, ; Rasmus, Charles, John, & Allen, ; Wendt et al., ), and they emphasize the centrality of relational context informing the strengths and weaknesses of these models for realizing the goals of each collaboration. Taken together, these works highlight exciting points of convergence between Community Psychology and many Indigenous peoples’ priorities while opening conversations within the field about the kinds of relationships that are needed to continue and improve upon in this work.…”

“…Contributing authors underscored the importance of attending to relationships within and surrounding Indigenous community collaborations. As one article noted, “very rarely are the mechanisms of ‘CBPR gone wrong’ examined” to offer guidance on how to maintain good relationships among collaborators (Rasmus, Charles, et al., ; see also Parker, Pearson, Donald, & Fisher, ). Reflecting on the relational context of federally funded collaborations with Indigenous communities, researchers raised seldom‐published concerns “about replicating colonial relations through pursuing research framed by priorities of federal funders and academic institutions” (Wendt et al., ).…”

“…Rather than fixed and uniform, though, research relationships were described as dynamic, multidimensional, and at times, exacting, taking a widely unacknowledged emotional toll on some Indigenous researchers (Walden & West, ). This includes, for example, painful experiences related to the death of a researcher or community collaborator, sometimes an elder who holds vast community knowledge and often guides research efforts (Rasmus, Charles, et al., ). Absent good relationships for research, these works highlighted how Indigenous community members may be guarded against sharing important nuances of local knowledge (John et al., ; Wendt et al., ), and researchers may overlook forms of diversity within Indigenous communities, creating additional challenges to collaborative work (e.g., diverse religious or cultural spiritual beliefs/practices informing different opinions about research engagement and community solutions; see Gone, ; Wendt et al., ).…”

“…While several researchers referenced existing literatures, many turned to contemporary Indigenous community members to provide that context. 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.…”

“…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, ).…”