Grief and Loss in Native American Culture: Strategies for Healing

Introduction: Grief and Loss in the Native American Experience

Dealing with grief and loss is a difficult experience for people in any culture. For people within the Native American community, grief and loss present their own unique issues and challenges as a result of the ethnic experience and historical loss thinking of the Native American people (Tucker, Wingate & O'Keefe, 2016). The history of the Native American people is one of sorrow and turbulence, yet also of pride and perseverance, and it is important to remember both ends of that spectrum of experience. While grief and loss are pain points, the other side of the spectrum reveals perseverance and pride that can shine through and be found even in the hardest circumstances.

Understanding how to address grief and loss among Native Americans is particularly important because, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2014) indicates, "death records show that American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) death rates for both men and women combined were nearly 50 percent greater than rates among non-Hispanic whites during 1999–2009." The leading causes of death for this group are cancer and heart disease—but the most striking statistic is that Native Americans are 50% more likely to die than non-Native Americans in the United States. Grief and loss, in other words, are literally woven into the fabric of life in Native American culture: they are aspects of life that simply never go away and that everyone in the community experiences—far more so than white Americans.

Native Americans have the highest prevalence of tobacco use among all populations in the U.S., and suicide rates are 50% higher among Native Americans than among white populations (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). These statistics suggest a deeply burdened culture that feels the pain of its heritage and history—the loss of ancestral lands and the loss of identity and cultural significance within the great melting pot of the modern American tradition.

Helping this community to cope with grief and loss is essential to advancing the population's health and well-being. To understand how to help this population, however, it is important to understand their family dynamics, political and economic concerns, and the ways in which they communicate. Researchers have focused attention on these specific cultural aspects, which, when studied, can provide ideas that support coping interventions for grief and loss assistance.

Family Dynamics in Native American Culture

Native American culture is grounded in the idea that all things are interdependent upon one another (Tachine, Cabrera & Yellow Bird, 2017). Interpersonal context is also critical for healing, as Heart et al. (2016) demonstrate. Child-rearing can be particularly difficult in the Native American population because of the depressed state of many communities and the fact that a disproportionate number of Native American children end up in foster homes (Pecora et al., 2017). Many Native American families also lack a relevant cultural framework to pass on to children: they carry a Native American heritage that is not always one that makes sense or applies in the modern world, as Native American author Sherman Alexie has suggested in his numerous works (Hossain & Sarker, 2016).

Alexie views life as a Native American as particularly difficult for families because they exist outside the mainstream culture of America and thus suffer from a stigma of being outsiders, failing to connect in a meaningful way to the world around them. It is not surprising, then, that many fall into depression, suffer from alcoholism, use tobacco at higher rates than any other group in America, or have higher suicide rates than whites. As Alexie has noted, many families consist of multi-generational households that suffer from a lack of central stability—which is one reason a disproportionate number of Native American children end up in foster care. Native Americans are, in many respects, immersed in white culture through cinema, television, and the broader American way of life, yet remain simultaneously cut off from full participation in it (Hossain & Sarker, 2016). This maladjustment places grief and loss at the very center of the Native American family experience.

Kinship bonds are strong in traditional Native American families, but traditional family structures struggle to remain relevant or prevalent in modern Native American society, as many people feel displaced within their own families and communities (Hossain & Sarker, 2016). Elders and tribal councils are important in traditional contexts but may hold less significance for those who have drifted away from traditional cultural moorings. Gender roles matter, especially in the context of coping with grief and loss, as women play a pivotal role in the healing process (Heart et al., 2016). The family dynamic is particularly complex and complicated among modern Native American families and must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Political and Economic Concerns

Poverty has always been a pressing concern within Native American communities, and many Native Americans survive on entitlements from the federal government (Grande, 2015). Native Americans have the highest poverty rate of any racial group in the U.S. at 26%, rising above 30% for those living on reservations (Krogstad, 2014). The high school dropout rate among Native Americans is 11%, surpassed only by Hispanics in the U.S., and only 17% of Native Americans hold a bachelor's degree from college (Krogstad, 2014). As a result, the unemployment rate of Native Americans is among the highest in the country, which is why so many rely on federal entitlements.

This economic reality also contributes to a broader cultural depression, as there appears to be little visible path for mobilizing out of it. Native Americans have limited political recourse or organization at the national level; political engagement tends to be inward-facing, directed toward tribal politics rather than national party affiliations. Political indifference is a recognizable characteristic of the broader Native American experience (Heart et al., 2016), and this disengagement reinforces the sense of helplessness that compounds grief and loss within the community.