Knowing Who You Are (Becoming): Effects of a university-based elder-led cultural identity program on Alaska Native students’ identity development, cultural strengths, sense of community, and behavioral health.

Abstract

In part due to cultural loss and identity disruption over many generations from colonial and neocolonial forces, significant emotional/behavioral health disparities exist among Alaska Native (AN) people. Such forces are apparent in higher education, where many AN students feel othered and are more likely to withdraw without a degree than their nonnative counterparts. A strong cultural identity has been found to buffer psychosocial difficulties. The AN Cultural Identity Project (CIP) was developed from the best available scientific literature, local data from AN students, and traditional wisdom from Elders to support cultural identity development. This 8-week Elder-led program incorporated storytelling, experiential learning, connection, exploration, and sharing of identity and cultural strengths to help students remain grounded in their cultures across settings in the hopes of improving emotional/behavioral health outcomes. Through a stepped-wedge design randomized controlled trial, we examined the impact of CIP on cultural identity, cultural strengths, sense of community, and emotional/behavioral health across two cohorts of 44 AN students who ranged in age from 18 to 54 years. On average, students attended 75% of the program. The program had positive impacts on students’ cultural identity development, endorsement of cultural strengths, sense of community with AN people at the university, and overall emotional/behavioral health. While gains in some outcomes were sustained over time, others were not, suggesting the potential benefits of a lengthened program. As the first program of its kind directed at AN university students of diverse cultural groups in urban settings, CIP shows promise for supporting emotional/behavioral health through cultural identity development.

Elder‐led cultural identity program as counterspace at a public university: Narratives on sense of community, empowering settings, and empowerment

“…CIP was developed in this vein, with its intention to support AN students' cultural identity development to promote their well‐being and help them to persist at the university. While quantitative data revealed that CIP had numerous positive effects on indicators of these individual outcomes (see Buckingham et al, in press), focus group findings pointed to the many processes of CIP as a counterspace that positively impacted everyone in the space—students, Elders, and other program personnel alike—shaped the space itself, and had ripple effects beyond the space.…”