Native Americans, otherwise referred to as American Indians or Indigenous Americans, refer to the over federally recognized indigenous tribes in the United States accounting for approximately 1.6% of the total population. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 sought to accord all Native Americans citizenship with the aim being towards ensuring that they would be recognized official as a community. It is believed that the Native Americans arrived in the land that is currently occupied by the United States more than 15,000 years ago from other regions of the world include Asia. One significant factor to note is that the Native American communities have a close cultural resemblance to traditional Indian tribes. From a cultural perspective, most of these tribes have been able to maintain a close cultural identity that allows them to maintain their distinct position in modern history.
The fact that the Native American tribes have been able to maintain a close cultural knit has resulted in a situation where it has become very challenging to establish connection on a wide array of areas including counseling among others. Sue & Sue (2008) argue that counseling remains as one of the key challenges when dealing with Native Americans, as most of the persons from this indigenous category have embraced cultural dimensions that affect their connection to modern history. The focus for this report is to examine some of the cultural dimensions that are serving as key contributors to the impacts that can be felt on counseling practices while focusing on the Native American tribes. The analysis of these cultural dimensions will help provide a clear understanding of how each of these dimensions is affecting overall expectations while engaging in counseling as a clinical practice.
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Cultural Dimensions Impacting Counseling Practices
The effectiveness of counseling practices depends wholly on the ability to incorporate elements of culture and cultural identity, which would be of value towards building that effective platform for ensuring that these practices actually achieve success. The consideration of culture creates a structured position through which to define key expectations with regard to these practices while projecting an overall shift in expected margins of success. However, it must be noted that some of the element of culture and cultural dimensions tend to have negative consequences on counseling practices resulting in unintended outcomes. In this case, the focus is on trying to examine some of the cultural dimensions, associated with Native Americans, that tend to have negative impacts on counseling practices. The expectation is trying to establish how these dimensions affect the actual process of trying to establish a framework through which to help build overall efficiency.
The following is an in-depth analysis of some of the key cultural dimensions, occurring within Native Americans, that impact counseling practices.
Tribe and Reservation
Tribe and reservation are key cultural dimensions that can be associated with Native Americans considering that most of these natives, living within urban centers and cities, tend to have a close relationship to their respective tribes. Beckstead, Lambert, DuBose, & Linehan (2015) point out that the relationship that the Native Americans have towards their tribes allows them to consider themselves as being an extension their tribes from multiple perspectives. Additionally, this also seeks to provide them with a sense of security and belonging regardless of their distance from other members of the community living within reservations.
Counseling, when dealing with minority communities, involves a delicate balance of having to establish a lose connection that would not only help create a relationship but would also mean that the patient develops trust for the counselor (Duran, 2006). The main issue arising from this situation is that it becomes hard for these persons to create a relationship with persons from other communities, as they tend to believe that they would be able to get everything they want from their tribe members. That serves as a key challenge considering that it creates a significant lack of connection between Native Americans and counselors. The ultimate result is that it becomes extremely challenging to achieve what would be considered as a structured avenue through which to define the overall effectiveness of using counseling as a tool for purposeful treatment.
The fact that most of the Native Americans tend to develop that close relationship with their respective tribes and reservations creates a situation where it becomes difficult or challenging for them to develop the expected levels of trust during counseling. Counseling is a process that is driven by trust between the patient and the counselor; thus, meaning that a lack of trust creates a situation where the counseling process is bound to fail. In the case of Native Americans, they tend to have that close connection to their tribes, which they believe gives them some sense of cultural and traditional identity. The ultimate outcome is that this creates a challenge for counselor intending to develop a relationship with persons from Native American communities. Additionally, this also creates a situation where it becomes much harder in trying to highlight the importance of counseling to persons that fail to develop trust for their counselors as part of the counseling process.
Sex Roles Expectations
Similar to other cultures, Native Americans tend to have a wide array of expectations for persons depending on their gender, which creates a situation where persons tend to find it much harder in their bid to taking up new roles within the community setting. Native Americans have developed a wide array of gender attitudes and behaviors that allow them to connect to what would be considered as their cultural perception. An example of gender role expectations that can be associated with Native Americans is the fact that men are not allowed to show any sign of weakness regardless of the challenges that they encounter. In other words, this means that men are always expected to show themselves as being strong as a way of meeting the expectations that are projected towards them from a cultural perspective.
That serves as a key challenge for the Native Americans to engage in counseling, instead, opting to find their own solutions to the problems or challenges that they face as individuals. The issue of substance abuse remains as being significant among the Native American population, which has created the need for having to adopt proactive measure to help build counseling practices as part of promoting mental health (Garrett & Carroll, 2000). The issue is driven by the fact that it becomes difficult or challenging for the Native Americans to open up about the personal issues that they are facing, as this would go against their cultural expectations. From that perspective, it becomes notable that indeed the expectations that have been created for different genders among Native American tribes is impact counseling practices significantly.
The gender roles expectations tend to create what would be considered as a template focusing on how each person is expected to behave within the community or society with little or no regard for personal value. For a majority of the Native Americans, this creates some form of limitation for them, as it becomes somewhat harder or challenging in advancing their mental health. On the other hand, this also means that it would be hard or challenging for them to establish a clear front focusing on how they ought to embrace counseling practices as part of their social establishments. From that view, it is clear that the gender roles expectations tend to create a blind approach towards ensuring that the people are able to see the value that would arise as part of their adoption of counseling practices.
Acculturation Conflicts
Native American children and adolescents find themselves experiencing acculturation conflicts attributed to the need for them to balance between maintaining their traditional values and the necessity to focus on the majority culture within their immediate social environment (Sue & Sue, 2008). The issue arising from this conflict is that most of the Native American children and adolescents tend to experience a wide array of problems in creating relationships with their families; thus, serving as one of the factors defining their poor academic performance. When engaging these children and adolescents as part of counseling programs, the most notable aspect is that they tend to have a poor understanding on what is expected of them from a cultural perspective. Most of these children and adolescents find it hard in trying to balance the different cultural expectations, as have been brought out through their immediate social environments within the United States.
The impact of the acculturation conflicts on counseling practices can be seen from the fact that the conflicts tend to reflect on the need for these children and adolescents to distance themselves from their immediate environments. Ultimately, this means that it becomes hard to actually develop a connection with these children and adolescents considering that they are in a balance in trying to maintain their traditional and mainstream values. The result of this is that most of the children and adolescents believe that they would be in a better position in the event that they would engage within their personal perspectives. That is by ignoring the fact that counseling seeks to provide them with a structured avenue through which to engage with others, who may be able to help them meet their respective life goals.
Educational Characteristics
One of the key problems that can be noted when dealing with Native Americans is the fact that they have low literacy levels that can be attributed to a pattern of decline in academic performance and an increase in drop outs attributed to a wide variety of factors. Lack of proper frameworks that would support education for Native Americans creates a major challenge in trying to highlight the need for these persons to embrace counseling as one of the key ways to deal with mental problems. Instead, most of the Native Americans tend to consider their traditional teachings due to their lack of their involvement and engagement as part of the modern education system within the United States.
Sun, Hoyt, Brockberg, Lam, & Tiwari (2016) point to the fact that lack of proper education among Native Americans can be associated with the poor uptake of counseling, as it creates a situation where it becomes hard or challenging for them to realize the value of such practices. Additionally, poor engagement in the education system contributes to increased cases of poverty and lack of opportunities for Native Americans. The result of this is that the suicide levels tend to increase at a significant rate, especially among Native American adolescents. That serves as a key impact to counseling practices, as it becomes hard or challenging towards highlighting the benefits of counseling while considering the high rates of suicide. The ultimate outcome is that most of the Native Americans tend to lose focus or hope when it comes to the idea of embracing counseling as one of the main outcomes towards dealing with such social issues.
Poor performance in education also creates a situation where most of the Native Americans find themselves experiencing hostile environments on areas such as employment and housing, which affects their desire to develop relationships with other communities. In such cases, counseling may not have any viable impacts considering that these persons tend to have a predetermined outcome on what to expect from life. In other words, this means that the Native Americans tend to consider their life as having being planned towards suffering due to the fact that they are find themselves in an environment that does not support their social development. That means that counseling is considered as being null and void with regard to achieving what would be considered as viable outcomes in building or promoting social development among Native Americans.
Discrimination
One of the key challenges that majority of the Native American communities and tribes have faced is discrimination focusing on areas such as leadership among others, which are considered as having affected their engagement as part of the United States. The discrimination that they experience has affected their abilities to advance their perception and connection towards counseling practices. Most of the Native Americans tend to believe that the counseling practices only seek to expose them to further discrimination when compared to other communities and tribes within the United States. Ultimately, this means that they tend to have a hard time in accepting the need for them to embrace counseling as a way of dealing with their personal issues. Instead, most of these persons tend to focus on adoption of a wide array of traditional practices that would help them avoid the need to go for counseling. Dealing with discrimination may serve as one of the ways through which to advance engagement of Native Americans to counseling practices, as this would mean that they have a clear understanding of the benefits that they would get from such practices (Gone, 2015). The long-term effect of this is that Native Americans would be in a rather proactive position allowing them to deal with the underlying personal issues that they experience from a communal perspective.
Religiosity
Religion revolves as one of the key factors that defines the cultural values that people, within different social or community setting embrace. Additionally, religion also serves as a factor that defines the social connection that people have towards multiple practices that include areas such as counseling among others. In the case of Native Americans, it must be noted that the different tribes tend to embrace multiple religions that define their cultural practices. Additionally, the engagement of the people in the modern United States has also exposed them to other religions that include Christianity among others. The concept of religion tends to act as a serious determinant of the way in which the Native American embrace counseling as a social practice. Generally, their exposure to multiple religion gives them a sense of connection towards the faith that they develop, which inhibits their engagements in counseling as part of defining their social positioning. The fact that most of these tribes are viewed as being very religious means that it becomes hard or challenging for them to build the generalized perception on what would be expected of them in embracing other practices such as counseling.
Conclusion
In summary, Native Americans, otherwise referred to as American Indians or Indigenous Americans, refer to the over federally recognized indigenous tribes in the United States accounting for approximately 1.6% of the total population. The fact that the Native American tribes have been able to maintain a close cultural knit has resulted in a situation where it has become very challenging to establish connection on a wide array of areas including counseling among others. The fact that most of the Native Americans tend to develop that close relationship with their respective tribes and reservations creates a situation where it becomes difficult or challenging for them to develop the expected levels of trust during counseling. The gender roles expectations tend to create what would be considered as a template focusing on how each person is expected to behave within the community or society with little or no regard for personal value.
References
Beckstead, D. J., Lambert, M. J., DuBose, A. P., & Linehan, M. (2015). Dialectical behavior therapy with American Indian/Alaska Native adolescents diagnosed with substance use disorders: Combining an evidence based treatment with cultural, traditional, and spiritual beliefs. Addictive behaviors , 51 , 84-87.
Duran, E. (2006). Healing the soul wound: Counseling with American Indians and other Native people . Teachers College Press.
Garrett, M. T., & Carroll, J. J. (2000). Mending the broken circle: Treatment of substance dependence among Native Americans. Journal of Counseling & Development , 78 (4), 379-388.
Gone, J. P. (2015). Reconciling evidence-based practice and cultural competence in mental health services: Introduction to a special issue. Transcultural psychiatry , 52 (2), 139-149.
Sue, D. W. & Sue, D. (2008). Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice , 5 th Edition. New Jersey, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Sun, S., Hoyt, W. T., Brockberg, D., Lam, J., & Tiwari, D. (2016). Acculturation and enculturation as predictors of psychological help-seeking attitudes (HSAs) among racial and ethnic minorities: A meta-analytic investigation. Journal of counseling psychology , 63 (6), 617.
