Description
This book focuses on the inequities that are persistently and disproportionately severe for Indigenous peoples. Gender and racial based inequities span from the home life to Indigenous women's wellness--including physical, mental, and social health. The conundrum of how and why Indigenous women--many of whom historically held respected and even held sacred status in many matrilineal and female-centered communities--now experience the highest rates of gendered based violence is focal to this work. Unlike Western European and colonial contexts, Indigenous societies tended to be organized in fundamentally distinct ways that were woman-centered and where gender roles and values were reportedly more egalitarian, fluid, flexible, inclusive, complementary, and harmonious. Understanding how Indigenous gender relations were targeted as a tool of patriarchal settler colonization and how this relates to women more broadly can be a key to unlocking gender liberation--a catalyst for readers to become 'gender AWAke.' Living gender AWAke encompasses living in alignment with agility (AWA) with clear awareness of how gender and other sociostructural factors affect daily life, as well as how to navigate such factors. To live in alignment, is to live from ones' center and in accordance with one's authentic self, with agility, by nimbly responding to life's constantly shifting situations. This empirically grounded work extends and deepens the Indigenist framework of historical oppression, resilience, and transcendence (FHORT) by delving deep into the resilience, transcendence, and wellness components of FHORT while centering gender. Understanding the changing gender roles for Indigenous peoples over time fosters decolonization more broadly by enabling greater understanding of how sexism and misogyny hurt people across personal and political spheres. This understanding can foster the process of becoming gender AWAke by identifying and dismantling of sexism and by becoming decolonized from prescriptive gender roles that inhibit living in alignment with one's true or authentic self.
Readers will gain:
- a research-based approach linking historical oppression, gender-based inequities, and violence against Indigenous women
- understanding of how patriarchal colonialism undermines all genders a tool to dismantle sexism more broadly
- pathways to become Gender AWAke through the understanding of Indigenous women's resilience and transcendence
Author: Catherine E. McKinley
Publisher: Springer
Published: 01/10/2023
Pages: 395
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.66lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.94d
ISBN13: 9783031185823
ISBN10: 303118582X
BISAC Categories:
- Psychology | General
- Social Science | Gender Studies
About the Author
Dr. McKinley's funded research focuses on centering sex and gender differences while promoting health equity for Indigenous peoples (American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiians). As a lead editor on a special issue and associated book entitled, "Indigenous Health Equity and Wellness," she is a leader conducting community engaged and culturally grounded health equity research. After a decade of work on violence against Indigenous women and families and associated disparities, her clinical trial research focuses on developing and testing a culturally relevant and family centered intervention (the Weaving Healthy Families, or Chukka Achaffi' Natana Program). This program promotes health and wellness while preventing the underlying causes of premature mortality and morbidity among Indigenous peoples, namely alcohol and other drug use and violence. Along with examining sex differences related to the effect and uptake of this intervention that incorporates mhealth, sex differences related to social determinants of health related to cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic health problems are focal to this work. She led the development of the Indigenous-based and ecological "Framework of Historical Oppression, Resilience, and Transcendence (FHORT)", which identifies, and culturally relevant risk and protective factors related to wellness across community, family, and individual levels from a relational perspective. This framework was chosen for inclusion in the edited book, Grand Challenges for Society: Evidence-Based Social Work Practice, and her work has also been highlighted as Best Paper by the Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Social Work in 2018, "Indigenous Women and Professionals' Proposed Solutions to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence in Tribal Communities."