Native American Postcolonial Psychology

By Eduardo Duran & Bonnie Duran

Subjects: Cultural Critique
Series: SUNY series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology
Paperback : 9780791423547, 246 pages, March 1995
Hardcover : 9780791423530, 246 pages, March 1995

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Table of contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Part 1. Theory

1. Introduction
2. Psychological Worldviews
3. The Vehicle
4. Theoretical Concerns

Part 2. Clinical Praxis

5. The Spirit of Alcohol
6. Intervention with Families
7. The Problem of Suicide
8. Community Intervention
9. Epilogue

Bibliography
Index

This book shows that it is necessary to understand intergenerational trauma and internalized oppression in order to understand Native Americans today. It makes native American ways of conceptualizing the world available to readers.

Description

This book presents a theoretical discussion of problems and issues encountered in the Native American community from a perspective that accepts Native knowledge as legitimate. Native American cosmology and metaphor are used extensively in order to deal with specific problems such as alcoholism, suicide, family, and community problems. The authors discuss what it means to present material from the perspective of a people who have legitimate ways of knowing and conceptualizing reality and show that it is imperative to understand intergenerational trauma and internalized oppression in order to understand the issues facing Native Americans today.

Eduardo Duran is Director of the Family and Child Guidance Clinic at the Urban Indian Health Clinic in Oakland, CA. Bonnie Duran is Director of the Healthy Nations Project at the Urban Indian Health Clinic in Oakland, CA.

Reviews

"This is a book about Native Americans written the way it should be. " -- Russell Thornton, Dartmouth College