Native American Students' Experiences of Cultural Differences in College
Native American Students' Experiences of Cultural Differences in College

Author: Leslie E. Clark

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 91

ISBN-13:

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The culture of most colleges and universities is very different for Native American students with close ties to their traditional communities. "Traditional," in a Native American sense, means multiple interconnections of emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual identity that combine to define expectations for the Native American way. This traditional cultural perspective is often in conflict with college cultures where typically only the academic or social aspects of identity are addressed. Research on college students of several ethnicities has found that the experience of post-secondary education can change individuals' attitudes, values, and behaviors. However, none of these studies focused on the experience of Native American students. This study attempted to determine how students' with a traditional Native American upbringing feel that their attitudes, values, and behaviors have been changed by exposure to the Western culture of a college environment, and further, whether this potential change was a factor in their academic persistence. In order to begin to explore Native American students' experiences of recognizing and negotiating differences of culture, attitudes, and values, this study analyzed unstructured qualitative interviews of 15 Native American college students. Themes resulting from the analysis of texts that describe the students' experiences included class differences, feeling academically unprepared, lifestyle differences, desire to disprove negative stereotypes, importance of finding supportive others, experiences of greater diversity, experiences of cultural tension, changes in viewpoint, increased independence, and an increased desire to give back to their native communities.

Men as Women, Women as Men
Men as Women, Women as Men

Author: Sabine Lang

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0292777957

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As contemporary Native and non-Native Americans explore various forms of "gender bending" and gay and lesbian identities, interest has grown in "berdaches," the womanly men and manly women who existed in many Native American tribal cultures. Yet attempts to find current role models in these historical figures sometimes distort and oversimplify the historical realities. This book provides an objective, comprehensive study of Native American women-men and men-women across many tribal cultures and an extended time span. Sabine Lang explores such topics as their religious and secular roles; the relation of the roles of women-men and men-women to the roles of women and men in their respective societies; the ways in which gender-role change was carried out, legitimized, and explained in Native American cultures; the widely differing attitudes toward women-men and men-women in tribal cultures; and the role of these figures in Native mythology. Lang's findings challenge the apparent gender equality of the "berdache" institution, as well as the supposed universality of concepts such as homosexuality.

Discrimination, Substance Use, and Cultural Buffers Among Native American College Students
Discrimination, Substance Use, and Cultural Buffers Among Native American College Students

Author: Brenna L. Greenfield

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13:

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The negative effects of racial discrimination and microaggressions on health have been consistently documented, but only a handful of studies have examined this topic among Native Americans. The goal of this study was to test the Indigenist Stress-Coping Model (Walters, Simoni, & Evans-Campbell, 2002) among Native American college students attending two post-secondary institutions in the Southwestern United States. It was hypothesized that microaggressions would be positively related to substance use, and that cultural factors would attenuate the strength of this relationship. A total of 347 participants (65% female) completed a one-time online survey that included the Microaggressions Scale, the Actualization subscale of the Urban American Indian Identity Attitudes Scale (a measure of cultural identity), and measures of past-month and lifetime substance use. In the past month, only 43% of participants drank alcohol and only 27% binge drank – figures much lower than national averages for college students. Thirteen percent were current smokers and 20% had used illicit drugs in the past month. Almost all (94%) had experienced a microaggression in the past year. In regression models, microaggressions were positively related to using an illicit drug more than 100 times and to lifetime CAGE-AID score when controlling for gender, age, income, and cultural identity. However, microaggressions were unrelated to past-month substance use variables. While stronger Native American cultural identity was related to less past-month substance use, cultural identity did not moderate the relationship between discrimination and substance use. A subgroup of participants (n = 61) from the larger study completed a 21-day daily diary measuring substance use, discrimination, and cultural involvement. The goal was to examine the prospective influence of daytime experiences of racial discrimination on evening substance use, as well as the moderating effects of cultural identity, positive and negative interpersonal interactions, and alcohol expectancies. Using multi-level modeling, daytime discrimination did not predict evening substance use, and moderators could not be tested because of statistical convergence issues. These findings highlight cultural strengths and comparatively low rates of tobacco and alcohol use among Native American college students despite substantial experiences of lifetime discrimination; implications for future research and intervention are discussed.

Confronting Race
Confronting Race

Author: Glenda Riley

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13:

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In 1984, when Glenda Riley's 'Women and Indians on the Frontier' was published, it was hailed for being the first study to take into account the roles that gender, race, and class played in Indian/white relations during the westward migration. In the twenty years since, the study of those aspects of western history has exploded. Confronting Race reflects the changes in western women's history and in the author's own approach. In spite of white women's shifting attitudes toward Indians, they retained colonialist outlooks toward all peoples. Women who migrated West carried deeply ingrained images and preconceptions of themselves and racially based ideas of the non-white groups they would meet. In their letters home and in their personal diaries and journals, they perpetuated racial stereotypes, institutions, and practices. The women also discovered their own resilience in the face of the harsh demands of the West. Although most retained their racist concepts, they came to realise that women need not be passive or fearful in their interactions with Indians. Riley's sources are the diaries and journals of trail women, settlers, army wives, and missionaries, and popular accounts in ne