SELECTED THESES ON THE CIRCUMPOLAR ARCTIC

Why is it that the descendants of the original peoples of North America living today on reserves and reservations continue to suffer disproportionately from poverty, poor health, violence, alcohol and substance abuse? What are effective means of bettering substandard conditions?
This study suggests that unresolved or poorly resolved individual and collective trauma is an often overlooked, key causal variable which helps explain present-day conditions in many indigenous communities. Part I and II explore the 'trauma thesis' and suggest that the experience of trauma may profoundly distort individual perceptual filters, values, and behavior, with damaging social ramifications. Prolonged and extensive trauma can distort institutions and destroy productive social capital, fostering the antithesis of a 'civic culture' -- a 'subculture of trauma' - with dire implications for economic and political life.
Multiple generations of Native peoples have experienced individual-level trauma in the context of massive collective traumatization. This coupling of individual and collective trauma is particularly deadly because, among other things, it cripples the capacity of individuals to heal. Under these circumstances, trauma is likely to be replicated through time and space, and manifest in substandard conditions.
In addition to exploring root causes, this study has aimed to provide some insight into possible means of reversing substandard conditions and enhancing well-being. To this end, Part III utilizes psychological theory on the processes of healing from trauma as well as field cases from North American Native communities. Part III suggests that a set of interventions employed by increasing numbers of aboriginal communities in various guises, described as 'culture as treatment,' are effective means of countering traumatically-induced social pathologies on reserves and reservations today (the 'culture as treatment thesis').
I conclude with an accounting of what culture as treatment might ideally entail: psychological, cultural and spiritual renewal. Renewal does not mean mere restoration of what was lost, even if that were possible, but may require a degree of adaptation to the changed realities of present-day circumstances.
Moreover, I suggest that cultural renewal/psychological healing and economic development are not necessarily at odds with one another. The economic and sociocultural imperatives can go hand-in-hand: they are compatible and indeed may support one another.'