essay on tribal discrimination

• Current Issue
• Past Issues
• Get New Issue Alerts
• American Academy of Arts 
and Sciences

Reclaiming Representations & Interrupting the Cycle of Bias Against Native Americans

The most widely accessible ideas and representations of Native Americans are largely negative, antiquated, and limiting. In this essay, we examine how the prevalence of such representations and a comparative lack of positive contemporary representations foster a cycle of bias that perpetuates disparities among Native Americans and other populations. By focusing on three institutions – the legal system, the media, and education – we illustrate how the same process that creates disparate outcomes can be leveraged to promote positive contemporary ideas and representations of Native Americans, thereby creating more equitable outcomes. We also highlight the actions some contemporary Native Americans have taken to reclaim their Native American identity and create accurate ideas and representations of who Native Americans are and what they can become. These actions provide a blueprint for leveraging cultural change to interrupt the cycle of bias and to reduce the disparities Native Americans face in society.

ARIANNE E. EASON is a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at the University of Washington. Her interests lie at the intersection of social and developmental psychology, specifically how children and adults process environmental information related to race and interracial interactions. Her research has been published in  Developmental Psychology, Current Directions in Psychological Science , and  Infancy .

LAURA M. BRADY is a Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. She has published in such journals as  Current Opinion in Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , and  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

STEPHANIE A. FRYBERG is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. Her work on representations of Native Americans has appeared in  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Social Issues, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology , and  Journal of Applied Social Psychology , among other publications.

What white people see when they look at you is not visible. What they do see when they do look at you is what they have invested you with. . . . To survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and recreate yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to impose who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you. –James Baldwin, The Last Interview and Other Conversations 1

When you think about the most accessible representations of Native Americans in the United States, what comes to mind? You might conjure historical representations of buckskin-wearing, teepee-dwelling people with feathers, or contemporary images of impoverished, drug-abusing, uneducated people. 2  Such negative, limiting, and inaccurate representations are widely accessible in the United States. Now, take a moment to think about what it means to be successful. You might think of someone who is highly educated, with a lucrative career in law, entertainment, education, or some other field. Do the aforementioned representations of Native Americans align with this image of success? How do you think these representations affect the way Native Americans are viewed and treated in consequential domains such as the legal system, the media, and education?

Social scientists largely agree that being human is a social project; people are shaped by the individuals around them and the cultural context in which they live. 3  The dominant culture provides ideas, beliefs, and assumptions about what it means to be a person or a member of a group and, as such, offers a schema for understanding both oneself and others. 4  For Native Americans, the most widely accessible ideas about their group, as well as the representations that stem from them, are not harmless misunderstandings or overgeneralizations. As Baldwin’s quote highlights, White American institutions and individuals have overwhelmingly created and defined prevalent representations of racial minority groups, including Native peoples. 5  The resulting representations reflect negative, inaccurate ideas about Native Americans while ignoring positive, accurate ideas. Consequently, biased understandings of how contemporary Native Americans look, sound, and behave permeate U.S. society. We contend that biased ideas and representations of Native Americans – particularly the scarcity of positive, accurate, and contemporary ideas and representations – constitute the modern form of bias against Native Americans and perpetuate a recursive cycle of low expectations, prejudice, and discrimination that reinforces disparities in domains from public health to education.

Breaking this cycle, as Baldwin contends, requires that new ideas and representations defined by Native American people accurately reflect who and what Native people are, not who others imagine them to be. We draw upon the culture cycle framework to describe how ideas and representations of Native Americans become embedded in the social fabric (that is, within institutions, interactions, and individuals) and provide a roadmap for change. First, we highlight how widely accessible ideas and representations about Native Americans fuel a cycle of bias and create disparate outcomes, specifically in the legal system, the media, and education. Second, we call attention to actions of Native American tribes and individuals that have reshaped U.S. culture and promoted more equitable outcomes for contemporary and future Native people. We end with a discussion of how both Native and non-Native people can leverage cultural change to break the cycle of bias against Native peoples.

The  culture cycle  describes the relation between the surrounding cultural context and individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Four levels of culture –  ideas, institutions, interactions , and  individuals  – work together in a mutually constitutive manner to shape and reinforce social and cultural outcomes. 6  The highest level of the culture cycle includes  ideas , such as social, political, and economic histories, assumptions, and norms. These ideas include understandings of how to be a “good” or “moral” individual, stereotypes that shape expectations of group members, and the value placed on different ways of knowing or engaging with the world.  Institutions  include the legal system, the media, and the education system. The practices, policies, structures, and products of institutions reflect prevalent cultural ideas. For example, the legal system sanctions individuals who violate ideas about “good” and “moral” behavior, and the media produces movies, books, and news reports that reflect and reify cultural ideas. Institutional practices and policies in turn provide scripts and norms that shape everyday  interactions  among people, institutions, and cultural products. Finally, ideas, institutions, and interactions all shape the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of  individuals.  When individual behavior aligns with cultural influences, it reinforces the culture cycle; when behavior does not align, it pushes back in subtle and not-so-subtle ways against the dominant cultural ideas and reconstitutes the culture cycle.

While conversations about disparities focus on how individuals’ characteristics – such as race, gender, or social class – relate to outcomes, the culture cycle framework highlights the importance of considering the role of the entire cultural system in perpetuating and alleviating disparate outcomes for Native Americans. In the next three sections, we highlight the mutual constitution of cultural ideas, institutions, interactions, and individuals by focusing on the legal system, the media, and education. These institutions reflect and foster a core set of negative and limited ideas about Native people that can lead influential individuals – for example, politicians, judges, lawyers, and educators – to lower expectations and ultimately bring about the exact same disparate outcomes society has come to expect of this group. Finally, we discuss the steps Native American individuals and communities have taken to create more accurate and positive cultural ideas of their groups, and how these actions reverberate throughout the culture cycle to promote more equitable outcomes, both today and in the future.

In historic and contemporary legal policy and practice, Native Americans have been represented as “uncivilized,” incapable of behaving according to mainstream American norms. 7  For example, until the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act was passed, federal policies treated Native Americans as “wards of the government” and prevented Native American communities from making their own decisions about health care, education, and governance. Similarly, federal laws have restricted tribes’ control over policing Native American communities; and federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, have failed to provide adequate funding to keep Native communities safe. 8  On one hand, restricting tribal control over law enforcement reifies the notion that Native Americans are incapable of policing their own communities. 9  On the other hand, federal and state governments’ failure to provide sufficient resources to Native communities causes the negative outcomes expected to arise from Native Americans’ supposed inability to police themselves, thus reinforcing harmful stereotypes.

Biased institutional understandings of Native people also impact law enforcement officers’ interactions with Native people and, ultimately, Native peoples' outcomes within the legal system. For example, interactions with law enforcement are more likely to end in the use of deadly force for Native Americans than for any other racial group relative to population size. 10  A study of Native American individuals from seven states and eight tribal nations revealed that even when interactions with police do not lead to violence, police often use racial slurs or derogatory language. 11  Courtroom interactions are similarly biased; for example, Native youth are 30 percent more likely than White youth to be referred to juvenile court rather than having their charges dropped. 12  Given these outcomes, Native Americans report being reluctant to turn to the legal system when they need help because they believe that law enforcement will not take their complaints seriously or intervene when they are in danger. 13  Interactions between Native Americans and the legal system not only perpetuate distrust, but also promote racial disparities that undermine Native peoples’ well-being and livelihood. 14

Construing Native people through a negative and limiting lens – as unable to govern themselves or as “uncivilized” – further justifies the perpetuation of disparate outcomes for Native Americans interacting with the legal system. The underlying assumption of these negative and limiting ideas is that anything non-Native legal institutions do on behalf of Native Americans is better than what Native people could have done on their own. According to this logic, in spite of Native Americans’ disparate outcomes in the legal system relative to other groups, changes do not need to occur because Native people are still better off than they would be if they were governing themselves. Yet such a biased and inaccurate view of Native people in the legal system obscures the fact that Native people have long governed themselves and worked to alleviate the disparate outcomes they face in the American legal system. According to the National American Indian Court Judge Association, 93 percent of federally and state-recognized tribes have their own tribal justice systems. 15  Furthermore, Native American individuals and communities have long utilized Indian law to advocate for their well-being and to challenge federal and state laws. Two such examples include the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

ICWA, which passed in 1978, gives Native American tribes jurisdiction over child welfare cases involving Native children. From 1969–1974, the U.S. government separated 25–35 percent of all Native children from their families and placed them in foster homes, adoptive homes, or institutions. A majority (85 percent) of these children were placed in non-Native homes even when Native homes were available, reflecting the bias that Native Americans are incapable of raising their own children. 16  The Association on American Indian Affairs conducted surveys in states with large Native American populations to understand why so many Native children were removed. These surveys revealed that many children were removed not because of abuse or neglect, but because their families practiced communal childrearing. Communal childrearing is normative in Native American communities, but it conflicts with the nuclear family model of childrearing that prevails in White, middle-class contexts. 17  Thus, the research affirmed that the removal of Native children was fueled by cultural bias against Native ways of being.

By giving tribes control over child welfare cases, ICWA directly challenged negative beliefs about Natives’ ability to care for their own children and changed how the U.S. government intervened in these cases. Following ICWA, the number of Native children placed in foster care or adoption between 1978 and 1986 decreased significantly. 18  ICWA’s passage set the stage for Native tribes nationwide to build child welfare agencies that keep Native families and communities together. 19 By challenging biased understandings of Native families and ways of being, ICWA and the Native individuals, organizations, and communities that were essential to its passing improved both disparate child welfare outcomes and relationships among tribal governments, Native parents, Native children, and federal and state governments.

Just as ICWA was a direct response to the disproportionate removal of Native American children from their families, the 2013 reauthorization of VAWA came as a direct response to the disproportionate rates of violence experienced by Native women at the hands of non-Native men. Approximately 56 percent of Native American women report experiencing sexual violence in their lifetime, and 96 percent of these women report sexual assault by a non-Native man. 20  Native women are the only ethnic group more likely to be assaulted by a male of a different ethnicity than by a male of the same ethnicity. 21  Prior to VAWA, federal and/or state governments had jurisdiction over cases involving non-Native men assaulting Native women on reservations. Despite this jurisdiction, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors failed to investigate or litigate many cases involving non-Native individuals, leaving perpetrators free to reoffend and victims without justice. 22  While rates of reporting and litigating against sexual assault perpetrators are low regardless of victim demographics, people of color, and Native American women in particular, face additional barriers rooted in racial bias. 23  Like many people of color, Native women are perceived as less worthy of protection than White women: 24  as recently as 1968, a federal appellate court upheld a statute that reduced sentencing for rape cases involving Native American women. 25  Furthermore, prosecutors often take Native women’s sexual assault claims less seriously, assuming that Native victims were under the influence (in accordance with the stereotype of Native Americans as drunks), making it less likely that litigation will proceed. 26   In 2015, after a decade of Native American grassroots efforts and advocacy, Congress added a provision to VAWA granting tribes jurisdiction over cases of intimate partner violence involving non-Native individuals on reservations. Once VAWA passed, a pilot project gave three tribes early jurisdiction. In the span of seventeen months, these tribes charged a total of twenty-six offenders. 27  While advocates are seeking to expand VAWA protections to other types of violence, this legislation stands as an example of Native communities working to address the needs of their people and improving their outcomes by assuming control over their own legal processes.

ICWA and VAWA demonstrate how Native tribes have pushed back against biased legal policies and practices to better protect and serve their communities, thereby improving their lives in contemporary society. In particular, there is a direct relationship between the number of self-determining actions a tribal community takes and the community’s mental health. Specifically, First Nations bands (the Native people of Canada) who enacted more self-determining practices that reflected their cultural histories and values, such as making claims to traditional lands or taking community control over education and health services, had lower suicide rates than bands who enacted fewer self-determining practices. 28  The legal system’s biased understanding and paternalistic treatment of Native Americans undermines equitable outcomes for Native American individuals and communities. Importantly, these outcomes are not predetermined or rooted in Native Americans’ “inadequacies”; when Natives challenge biased legislation and self-govern, Native communities flourish.

The institution most responsible for creating and transmitting biased representations is the media. Psychologist Peter Leavitt and colleagues, for example, examined the content that emerged from search engine queries for the terms “Native American” or “American Indian.” 29  Ninety-five percent of Google results and 99 percent of Bing results included antiquated portraits of Native American people in traditional clothing and feathers; contemporary images of Native Americans were scant. Although inaccurate, these antiquated images remain prevalent because people continue to consume them, so search engine algorithms continue to present them as valid representations of Native Americans. 30  Biased and inaccurate representations of Native Americans also persist in television, film, and advertising. While contemporary members of other racial groups are by and large represented, Native Americans are largely omitted. 31  From 1987–2008, only three Native American characters were featured on primetime television (out of 2,336 characters). 32  On the rare occasion that Native Americans are represented in mainstream media, they often appear in stereotypical roles (such as the casino Indian, “Indian Princess,” or drunken Indian) or in secondary roles lacking character development. 33  Individuals responsible for creating new media representations, such as casting agents or directors, often reify the invisibility of contemporary Native peoples by passing over Native actors for roles that are “unrealistic” based on stereotypes about Native Americans (for example, by not casting Native people as doctors or lawyers). 34  While there is great variability in how Native Americans look, speak, and act, Natives who do not fit a narrow, prototypical image of a Native American are often excluded from roles intended for Natives. 35  The lack of positive and accurate contemporary representations denies Native Americans’ continued existence and literally and figuratively writes them out of contemporary life.

Widely available media representations of Native Americans carry significant consequences, as they undermine Native Americans’ psychological well-being and hopes for future success. For example, Stephanie Fryberg and colleagues demonstrated through multiple studies that negative stereotypes of Native Americans and sports mascots such as the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo depressed Native Americans’ self-esteem, decreased perceptions of their Native community’s worth, and made them less likely to envision successful futures (such as earning good grades, finding a job, or completing a degree). 36  Such representations set in motion a self-fulfilling prophecy that renders Native American accomplishments invisible, hindering Native people from imagining and pursuing their own successful futures. 37  While harmful for Native Americans, these biased representations have a positive impact on White individuals, which may exacerbate intergroup tensions and disparate outcomes. After exposure to widely available representations of Native people, European American participants reported boosts in self-esteem and greater feelings of connection to their racial group. Both the negative effects of Native Americans and the positive effects for Whites at the expense of Native Americans suggest that it is critical to promote positive, contemporary representations of Native Americans that accurately reflect who Native people are and what they are capable of achieving. Breaking the cycle of discrimination and disparities in resources and achievement requires taking control of how Native people are portrayed both to the outside world and within Native communities themselves.

Although non-Native individuals created many of the prevalent representations of Native Americans, Native people are working to recreate representations that accurately reflect contemporary Native Americans. For example, in 2012, Matika Wilbur, a Swinomish and Tulalip photographer, launched Project 562, which aims to photograph members of all 562 federally recognized tribes. To date, Wilbur has photographed members of four hundred tribes. Wilbur’s photos depict Native people of all ages in both urban and rural settings, wearing contemporary Western and tribally appropriate traditional clothing. Unlike twentieth-century photographer Edward Curtis, who is responsible for many of the antiquated images of Native Americans that prevail today, Wilbur collaborates with her Native American subjects. She presents contemporary Native Americans in positive, contemporary ways that counter the systemic exclusion that characterizes the modern form of bias against Native people. 38

Similar video campaigns (including Buzzfeed’s “I’m Native, but I’m Not … “ and Arizona State University’s “Native 101”) and websites ( WeRNative.org ) showcase Native Americans resisting negative cultural ideas and offering more positive contemporary representations of Native people. 39  Native-defined representations offer accurate, nuanced understandings of Native Americans that have always existed but have been obscured by biased portrayals created by non-Natives. As accurate images of Native Americans take hold, they have the power to challenge harmful stereotypes and ideas about Native Americans and illustrate what is possible for them, breaking the cycle of bias and disparate outcomes.

For a final example of how negative cultural ideas and representations of Native Americans perpetuate a cycle of bias and disparities, we turn to the education system. In the United States, education is often viewed as the key to upward social mobility and “a better life.” Yet, just as in the legal system and the media, biased ideas about and representations of Native Americans limit Native students’ opportunities and outcomes. For centuries, Native Americans have been portrayed as intellectually inferior and Native ways of knowing have been viewed as incorrect and incompatible with mainstream U.S. education. Federal boarding schools, in which Native children were forcibly enrolled throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, aimed to eliminate Native cultures and languages and acculturate Native children into White society. Although this explicitly assimilationist agenda has faded, many of its ideas prevail within the education system today. Research reveals, for example, that Native students are often perceived to struggle or to be “problem” students. 40  School curricula also fail to incorporate – and sometimes actively exclude – Native Americans’ cultural history and practices from the learning environment, as these histories and practices are deemed irrelevant to the goals of mainstream education. 41

Negative and limiting ideas and representations influence interactions between educators and Native students and contribute to Natives’ disparate outcomes. For example, compared with White students with equivalent test scores and grades, teachers are less likely to recommend Native students for advanced coursework. 42  Native students are also suspended at more than twice the rate of White students. 43  These inaccurate and biased understandings of what is possible for Native students systematically deprive them of the ability to engage with and succeed within a system intended to foster opportunities for upward mobility.

Changing the way Native students are understood and treated within educational institutions can break the cycle of bias and alleviate educational disparities. For example, Stephanie Fryberg, Rebecca Covarrubias, and Jacob Burack describe an intervention in a predominantly Native American school that resulted in an 18 percent increase in the number of Native students who met state performance standards. 44  Teachers were taught about Native cultural ways of being, and school guidelines and routines were created to validate Native American cultures. Each school day began with a welcome assembly that included a tribal song and dance and a culturally relevant welcome message. When the intervention began, the school ranked in the bottom 5 percent of schools in the state, and much like the state and national pattern for the past forty years, there were no notable positive changes among Native students. 45  However, during the intervention, Native students improved immensely, showing growth on the Measures of Academic Progress (map) test at a rate of 1 to 1.5 years’ advancement in half a school year. This intervention revealed that school culture was the problem, not Native students: Native students thrive when their ways of knowing and being are validated in educational contexts and when they are seen as having potential. Creating more accurate representations – and thus understandings – of Native students paved the way for their success.

The culture cycle framework demonstrates the power of cultural ideas and representations in shaping Native Americans’ experiences. Prevailing harmful and limiting ideas and representations of Native Americans fuel a cycle of bias and reinforce disparate outcomes for Native people. These ideas and representations shape the policies and practices of consequential social institutions, promote low expectations for Native people that influence their interactions with non-Natives, and limit what both Native and non-Native individuals believe is possible for Native Americans. In addition to the prevalence of harmful and antiquated ideas and representations about their group, Native Americans  also  contend with the systematic exclusion of positive, contemporary ideas and representations. Consequently, Native Americans are effectively written out of contemporary existence, which creates barriers to their well-being and success. Hence, the modern form of bias against Native Americans includes not only negative ideas and representations, but also the omission of positive, multidimensional ideas and representations of their group. 46

Breaking this cycle requires challenging derogatory ideas and representations and also, as James Baldwin suggests, infusing the broader cultural context with more accurate contemporary representations defined by Native people themselves. The culture cycle framework can be leveraged to reclaim what it means to be Native American and promote equity. Indeed, Native people and communities have already begun harnessing this power for change. As we have shown, their actions in key institutions have brought light to positive, nuanced understandings of Native Americans as they live today and have challenged antiquated, biased representations. As Native Americans and their allies continue fighting systemic exclusion and bias, we must ensure that targeted action is implemented at each level of the culture cycle. The ideas and representations put forth must reflect Native Americans’ knowledge of who they are and what they are capable of achieving.

While it is essential for Native individuals and communities to have a voice in creating accurate representations of Native Americans, the onus for changing the culture cycle does not rest solely on Native Americans. Non-Native individuals and institutions must also actively foster cultural change. For White individuals specifically, this responsibility necessitates acknowledging the legacy of building and benefiting from a cultural system that has intentionally misunderstood and devalued Native people and ways of life and attempted to thwart Natives’ well-being and, in many respects, their very existence. As such, the dominant institutions must ensure that their practices, policies, and products set the stage for positive and equitable interactions with Native American individuals and communities. More generally, this responsibility hinges on a commitment to building a more equitable system that uplifts people from all backgrounds and allows all people to understand and recognize the needs, voices, and contributions of communities of color.

As the opening quote suggests, Native Americans are living within a cultural system that was constructed neither for nor by them. By understanding cultural influences on institutions and individuals, and by taking strategic, targeted action to change biased cultural ideas and representations, we can reconstitute the culture cycle to reflect accurate understandings of who Native people are and what they can become. Ultimately, these actions will produce more equitable outcomes for Native peoples both in the present and in the future.

• 1 James Baldwin, James Baldwin: The Last Interview and other Conversations (New York: Melville House, 2014), 4–5.
• 2 Walter C. Fleming, “Myths and Stereotypes about Native Americans,” Phi Delta Kappan 88 (3) (November 2006): 213–217.
• 3 Hazel R. Markus and Maryam G. Hamedani, “Sociocultural Psychology,” in  Handbook of Cultural Psychology , ed. Shinobu Kitayama and Dov Cohen (New York: Guilford, 2010).
• 4 Serge Moscovici, “The Phenomenon of Social Representations,” in  Social Representations , ed. R. M. Farr and S. Moscovici (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 3–69; and Serge Moscovici, “Notes Towards a Description of Social Representations,”  European Journal of Social Psychology  18 (3) (1988): 211–250.
• 5 In the case of Native Americans, see Robert F. Berkhofer,  The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present  (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 96.
• 6 Hazel R. Markus and Alana Conner,  Clash! 8 Cultural Conflicts That Make Us Who We Are  (New York: Hudson Street Press, 2013).
• 7 Devon Abbott Mihesuah,  American Indians: Stereotypes & Realities  (Gardena, Calif.: SCB Distributors, 2013).
• 8 Stewart Wakeling, Miriam Jorgensen, Susan Michaelson, and Manley Begay,  Policing on American Indian Reservations  (Washington D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 2001); and United States Commission on Civil Rights, Office of Civil Rights Evaluation,  A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country  (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2003).
• 9 Rosemary M. Maxey, “Who Can Sit at The Lord’s Table? The Experience of Indigenous People,” in  Native and Christian: Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity in the United States and Canada , ed. James Treat (New York: Routledge, 2012), 38–50.
• 10 Mike Males, “Who Are Police Killing?” Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, August 26, 2014,  http://www.cjcj.org/news/8113 .
• 11 Barbara Perry, “Nobody Trusts Them! Under- and Over-policing Native American Communities,”  Critical Criminology  14 (4) (November 2006): 411–444; and Robynne Neugebauer, “First Nations People and Law Enforcement: Community Perspectives on Police Response,” in  Interrogating Social Justice: Politics, Culture and Identity , ed. Marilyn Corsianos and Kelly A. Train (Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press, 1999), 247–269.
• 12 Christopher Hartney,  Native American Youth and the Juvenile Justice System  (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 2008).
• 13 See Perry, “Nobody Trusts Them !”; and Neugebauer, “First Nations People and Law Enforcement.”
• 14 Barbara Perry, “Impacts of Disparate Policing in Indian Country,”  Policing & Society  19 (3) (2009): 263–281.
• 15 “National Directory of Tribal Justice Systems,” National American Indian Court Judges Association,  http://directory.naicja.org/directory  (accessed September 15, 2017).
• 16 Claire Palmiste, “From the Indian Adoption Project to the Indian Child Welfare Act: The Resistance of Native American Communities,”  Indigenous Policy Journal  22 (1) (2011): 1–4.
• 17 H.R. Rep. No. 95–1386, at 10 (1978); and Steven Unger, ed.,  The Destruction of American Indian Families  (New York: Association on American Indian Affairs, Inc., 1977).
• 18 Ann E. MacEachron, Nora S. Gustavsson, Suzanne Cross, and Allison Lewis, “The Effectiveness of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978,”  Social Service Review  70 (3) (September 1996): 451–463.
• 19 Lakota People’s Law Project, “5 Sioux Tribes Applied to Fund Their Own Foster Care Programs,”  Indian Country Today , June 26, 2014,  https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/culture/health-wellness/5-sioux-tribes-applied-to-fund-their-own-foster-care-programs/ .
• 20 André B. Rosay,  Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men: 2010 Findings from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey  (Washington D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 2016).
• 21 Amnesty International,  Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA  (New York: Amnesty International USA, 2007).
• 23 Ibid.; International Indigenous Women’s Forum,  Mairin Iwanka Raya: Indigenous Women Stand Against Violence. A Companion Report to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Women  (Lima, Peru: FIMI, 2006); and Sarah Deer, “Toward an Indigenous Jurisprudence of Rape,”  Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy  14 (2004): 121–154.
• 25 Gray v. U.S. , 394 F.2d 96, 98 (9th Cir. 1968).
• 26 Amnesty International,  Maze of Injustice.
• 27 Jennifer Bendery, “At Last, Violence Against Women Act Lets Tribes Prosecute Non-Native Domestic Abusers,”  Huffington Post , March 6, 2015,  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/06/vawa-native-americans_n_6819526.html .
• 28 Michael J. Chandler and Christopher Lalonde, “Cultural Continuity as a Hedge against Suicide in Canada’s First Nations,”  Transcultural Psychiatry  35 (2) (1998): 191–219.
• 29 Peter A. Leavitt, Rebecca Covarrubias, Yvonne A. Perez, and Stephanie A. Fryberg, “‘Frozen in Time’: The Impact of Native American Media Representations on Identity and Self-Understanding,”  Journal of Social Issues  71 (1) (March 2015): 39–53.
• 30 Rand Fishkin, “The State of Searcher Behavior Revealed Through 23 Remarkable Statistics,” March 17, 2017,  https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed .
• 31 Dana E. Mastro and Susannah R. Stern, “Representations of Race in Television Commercials: A Content Analysis of Prime-Time Advertising,”  Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media  47 (4) (December 2003): 638–647; Russell K. Robinson, “Casting and Casteing: Reconciling Artistic Freedom and Antidiscrimination Norms,”  California Law Review  95 (1) (February 2007): 1–73; and Riva Tukachinsky, Dana Mastro, and Moran Yarchi, “Documenting Portrayals of Race/Ethnicity on Primetime Television over a 20-Year Span and Their Association with National-Level Racial/Ethnic Attitudes,”  Journal of Social Issues  71 (1) (March 2015): 17–38.
• 32 Tukachinsky et al., “Documenting Portrayals of Race/Ethnicity on Primetime Television.”
• 33 Casey R. Kelly, “Representations of Native Americans in the Mass Media,”  Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication  (February 2017),  http://communication.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-142#acrefore-9780190228613-e-142-div2-5 , doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.142; and Robinson, “Casting and Casteing: Reconciling Artistic Freedom and Antidiscrimination Norms,” 1–73.
• 35 Hilary N. Weaver, “What Color is Red? Exploring the Implications of Phenotype for Native Americans,” in  The Melanin Millennium: Skin Color as 21st-Century International Discourse , ed. Ronald E. Hall (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2013), 287–299.
• 36 Stephanie A. Fryberg, Hazel R. Markus, Daphna Oyserman, and Joseph M. Stone, “Of Warrior Chiefs and Indian Princesses: The Psychological Consequences of American Indian Mascots,”  Basic and Applied Social Psychology  30 (3) (July 2008): 208–218.
• 37 Stephanie A. Fryberg and Sarah S. M. Townsend, “The Psychology of Invisibility,” in  Commemorating Brown: The Social Psychology of Racism and Discrimination , ed. Glenn Adams, Monica Biernat, Nyla R. Branscombe, Christian S. Crandall, and Lawrence S. Wrightsman (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2008), 173–193.
• 38 Hilal Isler, “One Woman’s Mission to Photograph every Native American Tribe in the U.S.,”  The Guardian , September 7, 2015,  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/07/native-american-photographs-matika-wilbur-project-562 ; Whitney Richardson, “Rejecting Stereotypes, Photographing ‘Real’ Indians,”  Lens , February 19, 2014,  https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/rejecting-stereotypes-photographing-real-indians/?mcubz=1 ; and Matika Wilbur, Project 562,  http://www.project562.com .
• 39 Chris Lam, “I’m Native, but I’m Not … “ Buzzfeed, February 3, 2016,  https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrislam/im-native-but-im-not?utm_term=.yvERRZyBPe#.py9JJKLdl8 ; Deanna Dent, “Native 101,”  ASU Now , November 29, 2016,  https://asunow.asu.edu/20161129-sun-devil-life-native-101-asu-students-faculty-bust-stereotypes ; and WeRNative,  http://www.WeRNative.org .
• 40 Stephanie A. Fryberg and Peter A. Leavitt, “A Sociocultural Analysis of High-Risk Native American Children in Schools,” in  Cultural and Contextual Perspectives on Developmental Risk and Well-Being , ed. Jacob A. Burack and Louis A. Schmidt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 57–80; and Katie Johnston-Goodstar and Ross VeLure Roholt, “‘Our Kids Aren’t Dropping Out; They’re Being Pushed Out’: Native American Students and Racial Microaggressions in Schools,”  Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work  26 (1–2) (January 2017): 30–47.
• 41 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,  A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country  (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2003).
• 42 Claudia Rowe, “Gifted Programs across Washington Leave Out Black and Latino Students – But Federal Way is One Model for Change,”  The Seattle Times , April 2, 2017,  http://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/gifted-programs-across-washington-leave-out-black-and-latino-students-except-in-federal-way/ .
• 43 Rebecca Clarren, “How America is Failing Native American Students,”  The Nation , July 24, 2017,  https://www.thenation.com/article/left-behind/ ; and U.S. Department of Education,  Civil Rights Data Collection 2011–12  (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2014),  https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/data.html .
• 44 Stephanie A. Fryberg, Rebecca Covarrubias, and Jacob A. Burack, “The Ongoing Psychological Colonization of North American Indigenous People: Using Social Psychological Theories to Promote Social Justice,” in  The Oxford Handbook of Social Psychology and Social Justice , ed. Phillip L. Hammack Jr. (Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2016), doi:10.1093/oxford hb/9780199938735.013.35.
• 45 Kim Burgess, “‘Stagnant’ Test Scores for Native American Students,”  Albuquerque Journal , April 10, 2017,  https://www.abqjournal.com/985310/stagnant-test-scores-for-native-american-kids.html .
• 46 Stephanie A. Fryberg and Arianne E. Eason, “Making the Invisible Visible: Acts of Commission and Omission,”  Current Directions in Psychological Science  26 (6) (2017): 554–559.

Smithsonian Voices

From the Smithsonian Museums

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

Native Rights Are Human Rights

Remembering the humanity of Indigenous peoples on International Human Rights Day

Dennis Zotigh

On December 10, 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted and announced the proclamation of the  Universal Declaration of Human Rights  (UDHR), the first global decree of human rights. As a result, International Human Rights Day is observed and celebrated annually across the world on December 10th every year.  This year’s theme is equality and it  specifically calls on society to address the rights of Indigenous peoples, among other vulnerable populations . 

Native people historically have faced epic oppression and violations of their human rights. When the first Europeans came to the Americas, it was inhabited by millions of sovereign Indigenous peoples. As more settlers arrived, Native people were relentlessly pushed out of their homelands. After the founding of the United States, laws were made to legally support expansion into Native lands at the expense of Native people. From 1778 to 1868, approximately 368 treaties were made between the United States and Indian nations. By 1900, all of those treaties had been broken.

Each time a treaty was made, Native people lost more land. Removal forced Native people to relocate to strange and unfamiliar lands where they were challenged to survive. During the 1800’s reservations were established, depriving Natives Peoples access to the basic democratic principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While confined to reservations, the 1883 Religious Crimes Code attempted to strip Native people of First Amendment protections of freedom of religion by banning ceremonies and religious practices. This made it legal for Indian reservation agents and superintendents to confiscate or destroy Native religious objects.

At the same time, Native children as young as four years old were institutionally kidnapped by government and Christian entities with the intent to reeducate them towards assimilation, so that they could become “good Americans.” In these boarding schools, Native children were forced to abandon their Native customs and languages. Under the care of the U.S. government and Christian guardianship, thousands of Native children died with no accountability to their parents.

Since contact, Native people have died at epidemic rates due to disease, removal, war, abuse, natural causes and attempted genocide. Entire tribes ceased to exist and are now considered extinct. A once thriving Native population of tens of millions was reduced to a mere 250,000 by 1900. It wasn’t until 1917 that the Native death rate finally slowed to catch up with their birth rate, and the Native population began to slowly increase. With the Native populations growing, Indigenous peoples around the world have worked with their allies to advocate for the global recognition of their basic human rights.

Their efforts led to the creation of  the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples . This declaration sets out the minimum level of human rights protections that Indigenous Peoples domestically and internationally need to exist, survive and flourish. In April 2021, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (Pueblo of Laguna), addressed the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to reaffirm the current administration’s commitment to support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by advancing Indigenous peoples’ rights at home and abroad.

The continuing COVID-19 pandemic and its variants have highlighted the continuing plight of Indigenous peoples’ human rights. Within the boundaries of the United States, Native communities grapple with transportation difficulties and limited access to electricity, safe water, the internet, law enforcement protection and health facilities. This reflects the unbalanced poverty that many Native people still live in today, bringing into question how such conditions continue to exist in a nation that prides itself as a protector of human rights.

The media and law makers are slowly beginning to address current issues important to Native peoples and their right to existence. Social media has also served as a forum for Native citizens to share human rights concerns.  In addition, the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), serves as an advocate to represent Native peoples in “enforcing laws regarding rights to equal protection and to be free from discrimination in voting, education, incarceration, and religion. NARF also helps develop laws that provide unique protections for Native collective rights, traditions, culture, and property such as sacred places, peyote, eagle feathers, burial remains, and funerary objects.”

Other Native law advocates and activists are also diligently working on numerous human rights issues that include missing and murdered Indigenous women, violence against women and children, protection of sacred sites, educational and health disparities, crime in Indian Country, poverty and homelessness, treaty recognition, language and cultural loss, voting rights, water rights, taxation jurisdiction, climate change, employment and housing discrimination, oil pipelines across Native lands, Native misrepresentation and cultural appropriation, and the continuing effects of the Covid-19 virus and its variants.

Recently, the National Museum of the American Indian updated its vision and mission statement to reflect Native social justice awareness:

Vision Equity and social justice for the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere through education, inspiration, and empowerment.

Mission In partnership with Native peoples and their allies, the National Museum of the American Indian fosters a richer shared human experience through a more informed understanding of Native peoples.

Dennis Zotigh | READ MORE

Dennis W. Zotigh (Kiowa/Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo/Isante Dakota Indian) is a member of the Kiowa Gourd Clan and San Juan Pueblo Winter Clan and a descendant of Sitting Bear and No Retreat, both principal war chiefs of the Kiowas. Dennis works as a writer and cultural specialist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/about-us/news-and-blogs/cambridge-university-press-publishing-update-following-technical-disruption

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings .

Login Alert

• > Journals
• > Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics
• > Volume 7 Issue 1
• > Discrimination and resentment: examining American attitudes...

Article contents

Discrimination and resentment: examining american attitudes about native americans.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2021

What shapes Americans' attitudes toward and about Native Americans? Public opinion research acknowledges that race and ethnicity are a factor in shaping US public opinion. Native Americans have been almost entirely excluded from this research. But we do know that, despite being a relatively small population, the general public holds stereotypes and false narratives about Native Americans that have been perpetuated by popular culture, education curriculum, and national myths. In this paper, we use new and original data collected under the Reclaiming Native Truth project to examine the factors that shape attitudes toward Native Americans. More specifically, we examine individual and contextual factors that shape views of discrimination against Native Americans and resentment toward Native Americans. We find that political ideology (liberal versus conservative) and the reliance on Native American stereotypes are factors most consistently associated with resentment and attitudes about Native American discrimination, although direct personal experiences and factual knowledge also matter. Our findings contribute to conversations about attitudes toward racial and ethnic minority groups and emerging scholarship on the role of political attitudes in settler-colonial societies.

Access options

This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref .

• Google Scholar

View all Google Scholar citations for this article.

Save article to Kindle

To save this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle .

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

• Volume 7, Issue 1
• Raymond Foxworth (a1) and Carew Boulding (a2)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/rep.2021.23

Save article to Dropbox

To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox .

Save article to Google Drive

To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive .

Reply to: Submit a response

- No HTML tags allowed - Web page URLs will display as text only - Lines and paragraphs break automatically - Attachments, images or tables are not permitted

Your details

Your email address will be used in order to notify you when your comment has been reviewed by the moderator and in case the author(s) of the article or the moderator need to contact you directly.

You have entered the maximum number of contributors

Conflicting interests.

Please list any fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. This pertains to all the authors of the piece, their spouses or partners.

In the fight for racial justice, Native stories should not be ignored

Visiting Native studies scholar will delve into the origins of race in America

By Ivan Natividad

September 25, 2020

Watch Friday’s Berkeley Conversations: “Race —The power of an Illusion Part 2, The Story We Tell.” The event examined the impact and origins of the concept of race.

Race in America was socially constructed —based on white supremacy— and cannot exist without the creation of a racial hierarchy that leads to violence against communities of color.

That’s according to University of Alberta professor Kim TallBear , who teaches in the school’s Faculty of Native Studies department. A member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe in South Dakota, TallBear was one of several panelists examining the history of race in America during a livestreamed Berkeley Conversations event today (Friday, Sept. 25) at 1 p.m.

University of Alberta Associate Professor Kim TallBear’s research focuses on genetic science and the notions of race and indigeneity.

Attendees watched the documentary “Race: The Power of an Illusion: (Part2) The Story We Tell,”  which was followed by a one-hour discussion and Q&A session.

Sponsored by Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute , the screening and talk was the second in a three-part series delving into the concept of race and its origins in America.

“We have to understand history better,” said TallBear, whose research focuses on genetic science and the notions of race and indigeneity. “If we understand how we have each been racialized differently, to support different parts of white supremacy, it’s really helpful for having conversations about how we can support each other’s causes.”

TallBear spoke with Berkeley News about where Native stories fit in the discussion of race and racism and how understanding the history and stories of Native and indigenous peoples can help in the fight for racial justice.

Berkeley News : Why is it important to understand the concept of race and its history?

TallBear: The truth is, if you have race, there is no way to have race without the racial hierarchy that people are put into. There is resulting violence that comes from the creation of that hierarchy. Contextualizing it historically helps people understand why it’s imperative that we continue to interrogate and denaturalize race.

If race is thought to be natural and found in nature, people get comfortable, especially people who benefit from racial hierarchy, and we can get complacent about the need to tackle it and dismantle it.

For many decades, we’ve had scholarship and history that have interrogated and worked to denaturalize race. And you still have geneticists coming along in 2016 saying they discovered race is genetic.

The social sciences and humanities have been studying that for a long time, and I don’t know that it’s made any difference in terms of racial violence.

What it has done is given those who are subjected to racial violence ways to find alternatives that we can suggest for anti-racist organizing and institution-building in our communities.

Berkeley News will examine race justice in America in a new series of stories.

I’m not sure that all of the analysis of race as a social construct has lessened white people’s racism; it has certainly benefited those who are the object of racism, in terms of the conversations and the successes that we can enact within our communities.

The way I look at it is that white racism in the United States is like a boxer: It has got a lot of slick moves and can move around your jab and come back with another way to be racist. That’s what we see throughout history, a changing face of racism.

What does the changing face of racism look like now, for Native peoples?

When Elizabeth Warren came out and claimed to have Native American DNA, it was an example of the desire of many Americans to find an Indian in their family tree. That is often seen in the mainstream media as appreciation for Native people in history, or as multicultural inclusion.

But in order to claim to be Cherokee or Native, based on an ancestor from long ago, it’s the same thing as saying we’re all African, based on the fact that all humans share DNA that they could trace back to the ancestors that came out of the continent we now call Africa.

These ideas get respun in the 21st century as anti-racism, but they’re both predicated on the idea that there is an evolutionary hierarchy. By doing that, Africans stand in for ancient humans. A Native ancestor no longer has to exist in the present, as long as they exist in the body of the person who claims them.

Both of these things are essentially white people just feeling that they have a right to claim those ancient ancestors — therefore, they have a right to claim the land, they have a right to claim our DNA. They have a right to claim our power, they claim to have the right to do genetic research on exploited living populations now.

They have a right to control the discourse in the story of human evolution.

And then what they do is they take all of that genetic knowledge, which they mined from the bodies of less powerful living subjects with Black and brown skin, and they turn around and make a story of human connection and human relatedness in which they are still controlling the story, the biological raw materials of research and the institutions that research comes from.

Do you think that Native peoples’ stories are ignored in the discussion of race and racism?

The racial imagination of the U.S. is very much a white-Black kind of hierarchy. Race gets more complicated in the U.S. when you look at the triad of white, red and Black. In Canada, especially where I live on the prairie, it’s a lot like where I grew up in South Dakota: The racial dividing line is more visibly red and white.

Back when I was in graduate school, the book “Racial Formation in the United States” was a key literary work that covered the role of anti-Black racism in the law. But there was literally one line in the book about Native peoples.

So, yes, our stories are often seen as an afterthought in this discussion. Our stories are also often ignored in the media.

A native family in South Dakota’s “Wounded Knee” land. TallBear, who lived in the area prior to moving to Canada, said their stories are often ignored in the discussion of race in America. ( Photo Courtesy of flikr/Bartosz Brzezinski )

When stories about Native communities are covered, do you think the news media tells them accurately?

The coverage of Indian country by mainstream media is atrocious. It is completely out of touch with tribal life. They have these weird stereotypes of the “vanishing Indian” that influence all of their coverage.

They’re looking at everything through their stereotypical lenses of what Native people should look like and be.

I think our issues don’t get picked up nationally in the same way, so people get to know what’s happening through activist communities and in Native and indigenous media. With those sources, you’re going to get those stories about the missing and murdered indigenous women along oil pipeline camps , right away.

It takes a long time for that story to hit the New York Times or the L.A. Times.

I do think that there is a lot of information out there now that can be accessed. For people that want to know more about Native people and their communities, they should start following indigenous media.

In the United States, there’s the Indian Country Today media network, and they have just moved their headquarters down to Arizona State University’s school of journalism. There’s a lot of members of the Native American Journalists Association that are involved with them. They tend to be very liberal and mainstream, but they are pretty good at covering major stories in Indian communities.

There’s also the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Canada that also covers many U.S. stories so much better than mainstream media covers indigenous issues. There’s also Native America Calling , which is a weekly radio show out of Albuquerque that covers current events.

There are various alternative media that tell the story of Indian country well. You just have to seek them out.

Do you think understanding Native stories and history is important for other communities fighting for racial justice today?

Native history, and the struggles and the issues that other communities are going through right now, relate in the larger picture of how white supremacy works. If we better understand each other’s particular struggles, we can work better together.

I try to avoid the entanglements between how Native people are racialized differently in relationship to white versus Black people. This is why I would not rank the experiences of Native and Black people as “one is worse than the other.”

They’ve both resulted in terrible amounts of violence in relation to white supremacy, but different tactics were done to Native and Black people.

We were racialized differently.

If we understand how we have each been racialized differently, to support different parts of white supremacy, it’s really helpful for having conversations about how we can support each other’s causes. We have to understand history better.

• Bipolar Disorder
• Therapy Center
• When To See a Therapist
• Types of Therapy
• Best Online Therapy
• Best Couples Therapy
• Managing Stress
• Sleep and Dreaming
• Understanding Emotions
• Self-Improvement
• Healthy Relationships
• Student Resources
• Personality Types
• Sweepstakes
• Guided Meditations
• Verywell Mind Insights
• 2024 Verywell Mind 25
• Mental Health in the Classroom
• Editorial Process
• Meet Our Review Board
• Crisis Support
• Mental Health in Other Countries
• Culturally Safe Therapy
• Cuento Therapy
• Mental Illness Doesn't Discriminate
• Health Literacy
• Epigenetics
• Indigenous Racism

Mental Health Effects of Racism on Indigenous Communities

Justin Lewis / Getty Images

Indigenous Communities Face Prevalent Racism

Mental health effects of racism, treatment issues, how indigenous communities cope, indigenous mental health resources.

• Next in The Other Side of Stigma Guide How Do Other Countries Deal With Mental Health?

Racism is increasingly recognized as a factor that plays a role in mental health as well as disparities in mental health care. This can be particularly true among many of the most marginalized groups, including Indigenous communities. 

Indigenous communities can be found in countries throughout the world and make up an estimated 5% of the world's total population. While these communities are unique and differ from one another in a variety of ways, they do have a shared history of trauma, forced migration, discrimination, and segregation that have had lasting effects on generations of Indigenous peoples .

Racism is a significant factor contributing to the onset of mental health conditions, but it also plays a major role in increasing disparities that contribute to worsening mental health.

Research suggests that racism affects health and well-being by increasing unhealthy psychological responses, contributing to poor health behavior, physiological dysregulation, sleep disruptions, and higher rates of substance use.  

In November 2020, the American Medical Association formally recognized racism as a public health threat.

Racism directed toward Indigenous people is a common problem throughout the world. In the United States, research suggests that both discrimination and harassment are widely experienced among Native Americans.

These experiences occur in multiple domains and locations including in health care, education, and the criminal justice system. Racism can come in a variety of forms including racial slurs, harassment, exclusion, and microaggressions . 

The mental health effects of past traumas are also something that these communities continue to grapple with. Racist policies in the United States subjected Native Americans and Alaskan Natives to significant psychological trauma. Such policies were aimed at stripping people of their cultural identity and heritage. 

For example, children were often removed from their families as part of forced assimilation programs, separated from their parents, siblings, and extended families for months or even years at a time.

They were unable to speak their own languages and were barred from participating in their spiritual and cultural traditions. Such practices created massive collective and intergenerational trauma, damaging families, their children, and entire communities.

It is important to recognize that racism is not something confined to the past. The U.S. Department of Justice has reported that Native American and Alaskan Natives are the victims of more violent crime than any other racial group in the U.S.

The cumulative effects of these experiences can take a tremendous toll on physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. In the U.S., Native Americans face issues including poorer health, lack of quality health care, higher mortality rates, and higher rates of suicide, drug and alcohol use, and sexual violence.

Such issues are not confined to the U.S., however. Indigenous people live in counties all over the world and often experience various forms and degrees of racism. One survey of Aboriginal people in Victoria, Australia found that 92% of those surveyed had experienced racism during the previous year. Those who experienced the most racism also reported the highest levels of psychological distress.

Such reports suggest that finding ways to reduce racism can play an important role in improving the mental health of people who are part of Indigenous communities. 

Press Play for Advice On Dealing With Trauma

Hosted by Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast , featuring holistic psychologist Mariel Buqué, shares how to heal from intergenerational trauma. Click below to listen now.

Subscribe Now : Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts

According to the most recent census data, 1.3% of the U.S. population identifies as Native American or Alaskan Native.   Of these individuals, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reports that 19% have experienced a mental illness during the past year.

Evidence suggests that people who experience racism are at a greater risk of developing a variety of mental health conditions including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) . 

Some evidence suggests that exposure to racism can have particularly harmful effects when it occurs during important developmental windows in childhood.

One study found that Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander children who experienced direct racial discrimination during early childhood had an increased risk for negative mental and physical health outcomes during middle childhood compared to kids who had not experienced such racism.  

Substance and Alcohol Use Disorders

In the U.S., Native Americans and Alaskan Natives are significantly more likely to report having experienced the symptoms of an alcohol or substance use disorder in the past year than other races.

While a number of variables may contribute to the higher substance and alcohol use rates among American Indian people, research has suggested that factors such as racism, discrimination, and historical trauma play a significant role.  

Participants in one small study of tribal members in the state of Montana cited racism as a contributing factor to the onset of substance use as well as a major barrier to recovery. Other risk factors that are known to play a part in high substance use rates include trauma exposure, poverty, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Some participants in the study cited the intertwined effects of racial trauma and poverty as key factors driving substance and alcohol use. "People can’t understand…there’s intergenerational trauma, and then this need to belong, with such a high rate of poverty, a high rate of unemployment—they say it’s like 80% on the reservation," one participant explained.

Statistics show that Indigenous communities all over the world are frequently impacted by suicide at much greater rates than the non-Indigenous population. In the United States, the Indian Health Service reports that the suicide rate for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is 1.6 times higher than it is for all other races found in the U.S.

A 2011 report by Statistics Canada found that the suicide rate among Indigenous people in Canada was three times higher than it was for non-Indigenous Canadians. In particular, young people between the ages of 15 and 24 as well as women were found to be particularly vulnerable.

What are some explanations for the increased suicide risk faced by Indigenous peoples? Current racism as well as the effects of cumulative grief and historical trauma can all play a role in contributing to high suicide rates among Indigenous communities.

Historical trauma refers to the cumulative psychological effects that affect people across generations due to a significant collective trauma. 

Research suggests that up to a third of Indigenous adults report having daily thoughts related to this form of trauma, leading to serious negative emotional effects. Historical trauma has been linked to symptoms such as survivor's guilt , depression, poor self-esteem , increased fear, and self-destructive behavior.

Statistics also suggest that Indigenous communities face higher rates of domestic violence. Native American and Alaskan Native women experience among the highest races of intimate partner violence and sexual assault.

The Association on American Indian Affairs reports that women, girls, and Two Spirit people are most impacted by violence, with nearly 85% of American Indian and Alaska Native women reporting that they have experienced violence during their lifetime.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

This is particularly evident in the missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) epidemic that has affected individuals in the U.S. and Canada. The corresponding movement inspired by these acts aims to raise awareness of the disproportionately high rate of violence, homicide, sexual assault, and sex trafficking experienced by First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Native American women.

In addition to the mental health effects of racism, race-based discrimination can also play a role in treatment. Systemic racism and relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures can influence a variety of factors related to mental health treatment. 

The American Psychiatric Association reports that the utilization of mental health services by Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is low. This is likely due to the combination of several factors, which include a lack of mental health services, a low number of culturally trained providers, and the stigmatization of mental health conditions in Indigenous communities.

Attitudes Toward Treatment

Because of the high prevalence of racism directed toward many Indigenous communities, people may be less likely to seek out treatment when they are facing mental health issues. For example, researchers have found that 1 in 6 Native Americans report seeking medical assistance because of anticipated discriminatory or unfair treatment.  

Indigenous beliefs about mental illness can also play a role in the type of help people decide to seek. In many cases, people may be more likely to seek help from a traditional or spiritual healer who is part of their community rather than from a medical source.

Because Indigenous worldviews differ from those of many non-Indigenous cultures, expressions of emotional distress may also be different from the diagnostic criteria outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) , the resource used by doctors to diagnose mental health conditions.

Access to Services

Racism can also play a role in affecting the availability and accessibility of mental health services in Indigenous communities. Some research suggests that people may be more likely to prefer ethnically matched providers, particularly among groups who have been historically marginalized by non-Indigenous people.

In the U.S., there is a scarcity of mental health care providers who are of Native American or Alaskan Native background.

Indigenous communities also often lack access to health services. Healthcare accessibility is often impacted by policies that neglect the needs of Indigenous communities. Access to mental health services is also often severely limited by a number of factors including lack of insurance coverage and a lack of accessible clinics serving Indigenous communities. While tribal reserves may provide mental health services, many Indigenous people live outside of these areas.

Lack of Culturally Trained Providers

Culturally competent mental health care is important in order to understand and address the needs of people who are part of Indigenous communities. The Indian Health Service reports that more than 50% of mental health programs and more than 80% of substance and alcohol abuse programs are tribally operated.  

This helps to ensure that people are better able to access holistic, integrated, community-based services that incorporate cultural and traditional practices while addressing issues such as racism, historical trauma, and cultural healing.

However, this means that people living in areas outside of tribal communities may have a much more difficult time accessing such services and finding culturally sensitive care.

People are also affected by Western views of mental well-being that neglect Indigenous views of mental health and trauma. In his book Healing the Soul Wound: Counseling With American Indians and Other Native Peoples , psychologist Eduardo Duran describes the concept of a "soul wound," which describes the way traumatic events disrupt the interconnections between the mind, body, and spirit. Duran suggests that mental health practitioners need to provide interventions that address these holistic connections.  

In order to address the effects of trauma and provide quality mental health services, it is essential for providers to consider the perspective and experiences of Indigenous peoples.

Racism in Healthcare

In a report exploring experiences with the Canadian healthcare system, Indigenous people reported widespread racism and discrimination that impacted both access to care and health outcomes. Approximately half of non-Indigenous health care workers reported witnessing racist or discriminatory actions toward Indigenous patients and nearly 30% of Indigenous people reported hearing racist comments regularly.

Such discrimination often takes various forms but included such things as:

• Denial of service
• Poor communication
• Minimizing problems
• Assuming drug or alcohol use
• Poor pain management
• Lack of respect for cultural protocols

"The overall tone of what I can only describe as ‘disdain’ that was shown to my family day in and day out for taking up space in the hospital. The glances, the glares, the apathy was heavily noted by many of us, as it seemed they would prefer that we not be there," explained one First Nations woman of her family's ICU experience while her father was dying.

Indigenous patients also report that health care workers are often resistant to even hearing about cultural health practices. Thirty percent of respondents reported that requests to follow cultural practices with regards to events such as birth and death were often denied.

Because of the serious detrimental effects of racism, finding ways to reduce discrimination and its impact are important to the health and well-being of Indigenous communities. There are a number of other factors that can be helpful in mitigating the mental health impacts of racism.

Indigenous worldviews can serve as a protective force. Many Indigenous cultures throughout the world hold worldviews that emphasize the importance of family, social bonds, and connectedness. Such connections and supportive relationships can play an important role in bolstering the mental health and well-being of Indigenous communities. 

The American Psychiatric Association reports that protective factors that can reduce the risk of negative mental health effects and promote increased well-being include:

• Adaptability
• Appreciation for the wisdom of elders
• Connections to the past
• Strong identification with culture
• Traditional health practices  

Some programs that offer mental health resources for Indigenous communities include:

• One Sky Center : Offered by the American Indian/Alaska Native National Resource Center for Health, Education, and Research, One Sky Native has resources related to mental health, substance use, and suicide prevention.
• StrongHearts Native Helpline : This service offers a national helpline that people can call (1-844-762-8483) for anonymous and culturally sensitive help with dating and domestic violence.
• WeRNative : Aimed at and created by Native youth, this site offers information on mental health, culture, relationships, and LGBTQ/Two Spirit issues.

There is an abundance of research demonstrating the profound negative effects that racism can have on Indigenous communities. The widespread prevalence of continued racism demonstrates that such issues need further intervention that seeks to end discrimination. 

Because of the prevalence and impact of racism, addressing it over the course of treatment can be important for recovery. However, research suggests that racism and its effects are rarely discussed by mental health professionals during treatment.

The mental health effects of racism on Indigenous communities points to the need for both policy and social changes that can help reduce stereotypes and discrimination while addressing the economic, health, and social inequalities that continue to reinforce the lingering impact of colonization and racial trauma.

Paradies Y, Ben J, Denson N, Elias A, Priest N, Pieterse A, Gupta A, Kelaher M, Gee G. Racism as a determinant of health: a systematic review and meta-analysis . PLoS One . 2015;10(9):e0138511. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0138511

American Medical Association. New AMA policy recognizes racism as a public health threat .

Findling MG, Casey LS, Fryberg SA, et al. Discrimination in the United States: experiences of Native Americans .  Health Serv Res . 2019;54(S2):1431-1441. doi:10.1111/1475-6773.13224

Localities Embracing and Accepting Diversity (LEAD). Mental health impacts of racial discrimination in Victorian Aboriginal communities .

U.S. Census Bureau. QuickFacts: United States .

Cave L, Shepherd CCJ, Cooper MN, Zubrick SR. Racial discrimination and the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children: Does the timing of first exposure matter? SSM Popul Health . 2019;9:100492. doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2019.100492

Indian Health Service. Behavioral health .

Skewes MC, Blume AW. Understanding the link between racial trauma and substance use among American Indians .  Am Psychol . 2019;74(1):88-100. doi:10.1037/amp0000331

Statistics Canada. Suicide among First Nations people, Métis and Inuit (2011-2016): Findings from the 2011 Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohort (CanCHEC) .

Whitbeck LB, Adams GW, Hoyt DR, Chen X. Conceptualizing and measuring historical trauma among American Indian people . Am J Community Psychol . 2004;33(3-4):119-30. doi: 10.1023/b:ajcp.0000027000.77357.31

Brave Heart MY, Bird DM. Historical trauma and suicide . Indian Health Service.

Association on American Indian Affairs. Indigenous peoples and violence .

American Psychiatric Association. Mental health disparities: American Indians and Alaska Natives .

Duran E. Multicultural foundations of psychology and counseling series. Healing the soul wound: Counseling with American Indians and other native peoples.  Teachers College Press; 2006.

In plain sight: addressing indigenous-specific racism and discrimination in B.C. health care .

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."