Postcolonial practice in occupational therapy

Chapter 20. Postcolonial practice in occupational therapy


the Tule River Tribal History Project


Gelya Frank, Heather J. Kitching, Allison Joe, Colleen Harvey, Rani Bechar, Amber Bertram, Jeanine Blanchard and Jaynee Taguchi-Meyer



Rudolf Virchow, the towering 19th century physician, anthropologist and statesman, noted that almost all problems of health and wellness are the result of politics (Waitzkin, 1981 and Eisenberg, 1984). Virchow was well versed in the new germ theories that took medicine into the modern age. He himself was a leader in the new science of cellular pathology (Ackerknecht 1953). But on a fact-finding mission to Silesia, where a typhus epidemic was raging, Virchow frankly blamed malnutrition, poor sanitation and, more basically, economic neglect and political oppression as causes. ‘Medicine is a social science,’ he asserted, ‘and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale’ (Rosen 1974, p. 65).

Occupational therapists today are coming to a similar conclusion. More than ever in the history of the profession, occupational therapists are harnessing the potential of meaningful and purposeful activities to build health and well-being in populations that struggle with the effects of colonization, racism, imperialism, war, violence, environmental degradation and economic exploitation (Watson and Swartz, 2004 and Kronenberg et al., 2005). Occupational therapy has a track record in working with indigenous people at the individual level (such as managing diabetes and other chronic illnesses that disproportionately afflict Native people; Staples and McConnell, 1993, Watts and Carlson, 2002 and McGarrigle and Nelson, 2006). The profession is also beginning to engage with postcolonial projects at the level of the health and well-being collectively of the tribe, band or community.

The Tule River Tribal History Project is a postcolonial project based in occupational science and occupational therapy (Yerxa et al., 1990, Clark et al., 1991, Zemke and Clark, 1996 and Frank et al., 2001). Designed in collaboration with an anthropologist consultant who has worked for over 30 years with a California tribe, the project made use of five meaningful, purposeful activities or occupations to facilitate an official goal of the Tule River Tribal Council since 1973, to preserve the history of the Tule River Reservation and its families (Frank 2007, Frank et al, submitted). The project was targeted for tribal elders, defined as age 55 or older (n = 118), but all tribal members were welcome to participate.

A full-time occupational therapy staff (one doctoral student and four level II master’s fieldwork interns) from the Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of Southern California, developed methods and protocols for the history-making activities (described by Taguchi-Meyer et al 2005). They implemented the project over the course of 12 weeks in the summer of 2004. The activities included creating a digital archive of family photo collections, using computer software to construct family trees, one-on-one interviews beginning with the oldest of the tribal elders, video-recorded roundtable discussions of topics related to tribal history, and development of a website.




Postcolonial and indigenous views of health and well-being


Postcolonialism is a view of history and politics that gives ‘equal weight to outward historical circumstances and, importantly, to the ways in which those circumstances are experienced by postcolonial subjects’ (Young 2001, p. 58). Indigenous scholars and clinicians attribute many of the physical, mental and behavioural health problems among Native people to the disruptions or ‘ruptures’ caused by colonial domination.

These scholars and clinicians have begun to theorize and treat effects of colonization under the rubrics of intergenerational trauma and historical trauma (Duran and Duran, 1995, Duran et al., 1998 and Duran, 2006). Their work with indigenous patients and clients views the ruptures to Native societies caused by colonization as the root cause of high rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, addiction to unhealthful food leading to metabolic disorders such as diabetes, depression, self-destructive acts and violence against others that afflict Native communities.

Public health data for Native Americans support these assertions (Manson 2004). Ethnographic research on the Flathead Reservation in Montana and with Yurok tribespeople in northern California elucidates how some Native people have managed chronic depression or melancholy. Native people on the Flathead Reservation accord these symptoms specific cultural and ethical meanings with regard to how they should treat others. Native people interviewed among the Yurok of northern California engage in disciplined forms of ritual healing (O’Nell, 1996 and Buckley, 2002). Such socially embedded remedies, like those of occupational therapy dating back to its moral treatment roots, are holistic (Ozarin, 1954 and Charland, 2007).

Activities related to creating alternative histories are also important remedies. Postcolonialist scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Maori) has proposed a set of ‘twenty-five indigenous projects’ that underscore the importance of creating alternative histories (Smith 1999). She names these projects: Claiming, Testimonies, Story-telling, Celebrating survival, Remembering, Indigenizing, Intervening, Revitalizing, Connecting, Reading, Writing, Representing, Gendering, Envisioning, Reframing, Restoring, Returning, Democratizing, Networking, Naming, Protecting, Creating, Negotiating, Discovering and Sharing.

These postcolonial projects are not simply ideas or topics for discussion. They must be experienced, performed or enacted. In other words, they are meaningful, purposeful activities or occupations. When enacted, such history-making occupations help to overcome the sense of disruption and loss that Native peoples tend to suffer as the legacy of genocide, forced acculturation and marginal living conditions. Importantly, postcolonialist approaches help to locate dysfunction in Native communities as having external causes rather than reflecting some inherent lack of ability or worth in the sufferers.



While parallels exist with narrative therapy and other mainstream treatments, postcolonial approaches explicitly focus on the colonization experience and work toward reconstituting a shared, viable cultural heritage (Epston and White, 1992 and Freedman and Combs, 1996). Consequently, theorists and practitioners who use a postcolonial approach understand their work as operating at both the individual and collective levels, something that is not generally shared with mainstream Western or Eurocentric therapies.

The Tule River Tribal History Project was pitched precisely at the level of collective well-being rather than focusing on individual mental health. The project’s activities were structured in the service of constituting a tribal legacy. It succeeded in promoting more cooperation and better communication among diverse generations and families within the tribe.


A brief history of the Tule River Tribe



Native people in central California experienced three phases of colonial domination — Spanish, Mexican and American. However, the American occupation, starting in 1848, resulted in the most rapid and severe dispossession of land, cultural disruption and decline not only in California but in the history of North America (Rawls, 1984 and Hurtado, 1988). It has been estimated that nearly 20% of the indigenous population was wiped out in the first 4 years, between 1848 and 1852, as a consequence of the Gold Rush (Cook 1976). But the genocide continued after statehood, which occurred in 1850. By 1880, only about 17% of the Native population remained (Cook 1976).

As anthropologist Gelya Frank and legal scholar Carole Goldberg recount in a forthcoming full-length history of the Tule River Tribe, federal policies resulted in successive ruptures to the inherent sovereignty or self-determination of the survivors (Frank & Goldberg, in press). Members of some local tribes were initially induced to move to the Tejon Reservation in the southernmost part of the valley in 1854. Two years later, others were defeated in a devastating war initiated by settlers and the local tribe ordered on to the first Tule River Reservation, near present-day Porterville. They became successful agriculturalists and viewed the reservation, established on a former village site, as their rightful permanent home.

A government employee fraudulently gained title to this tract of good agricultural land. He managed to force the government to pay an exorbitant yearly rental to keep the Native population there. Eventually, in January 1873, the federal government established a second Tule River Reservation in the remote foothills where the land was unsuited to agriculture without costly improvements. Troops on horseback brandishing swords eventually forced the tribe to move there in 1876.

While a few families who managed to gain the use of good land and plentiful water were able to live comfortably, many families lived a marginal existence and some left the reservation entirely. Although the size of the reservation had been doubled in October 1873 to include better land for farming, the government refused to allocate the funds needed to compensate prior settlers on the new tract. In August 1878, the boundaries were redrawn, returning the reservation to its original size.

The reservation population from the late 19th through the early 20th century remained at about 150 members. Some tribal members were able to get started in the cattle-raising business but, as the cash economy took over, most families had members who worked as seasonal labourers off the reservation. They earned a meagre living mainly caring for livestock, working in timber or picking fruit.

Federal policies in the 1930s and again in the 1970s have helped to restore a degree of sovereignty — i.e. self-government and self-determination — among federally recognized tribes on reservation land. The US Supreme Court decision United States v Cabezon Band of Mission Indians (1988) gave a huge boost to the sovereignty movement by removing impediments to the Indian gaming industry on tribal lands. While the Tule River Tribe’s casino operation is comparatively modest, this new source of revenue made it possible for the Tule River Tribal Council to fund the tribal history project in 2004.

The Tribal History Project also received funds through the Owens Valley Career Development Center Tribal TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), a state–federal programme. Tribes may elect to administer funds earmarked for eligible members to promote culturally relevant services. The Owens Valley Career Development Center, in Bishop, California, represents a consortium of eight tribes, including Tule River.





An occupational approach with the Muwekma Ohlone



In his book Abalone Tales, anthropologist Les Field describes his work with the Muwekma Ohlone to provide historical documentation in support of their effort to gain federal acknowledgement for their tribe (Field 2008). Field helped to conceive and organize an abalone feast. Abalone, an endangered species, was formerly the staple food of the Muwekma Ohlone, a food that older members of the tribe would often mention nostalgically. The event helped trigger intergenerational sharing of new narratives about Muwekma Ohlone history and identity as part of ongoing revitalization efforts by the tribe. Field’s work exemplifies that of anthropologists working collaboratively with Native Americans to achieve tribally defined goals (Lassiter 2005). At the same time, tribal governments are asserting their sovereign power to grant or deny permission to conduct research in Indian country, calling for more accountability to tribally defined needs (Champagne & Goldberg 2005).

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Jun 4, 2016 | Posted by in MANUAL THERAPIST | Comments Off on Postcolonial practice in occupational therapy

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