Smoke Signals 11
MARCH 15, 2003
Dr. Joseph Stone Publishes Notable Paper
Study traces the effects of colonialism on Tribal peoples.
The past is never dead. It's not even past
William Faulkner
By Ron Karten
When Sheridan's Friends of the Library commit
tee turned down a $75,000 grant from the Spirit
Mountain Community Fund last August over the
committee's insistence on being free to use Phil
Sheridan's name for the new library, one of those
who commented asked when the Indians are going
to get over this terrible history of theirs, and lay it
to rest.
Joseph Stone Ph.D., Behavioral Health Director
for the Health and Wellness Center of the Confeder
ated Tribes of Grand Ronde, provides a context for
that question in his latest publication, a technical
paper with the technical title, "Focus on Cultural
Issues in Research: Developing and Implementing
Native American Postcolonial Participatory Action
Research."
The article takes on many even in the psychology
community who believe, in Stone's words, "there's
no theoretical way to describe historical facts and
tie them to present issues." Still, he made some
points very clear, and the dedication is a good place
to start: "This paper is for you, little brother, and it
is for all the injured young Native men and women
who have chosen to take the path of suicide."
It was presented to a Work Group on American
Indian Research and Program Evaluation Method
ology held in Washington, D.C. last April.
The paper described the interplay between a well
known history and its many behavioral results
on-going for 500 years.
Stone's paper focused on the effects of post-colonial
stress, or put another way, how
terrible parts of Indian history con
tinue to be replayed in the lives of
Indians today.
Stones explanation goes like
this: when the parents suffer from
excessive anxiety, depression, and
or substance abuse, the children
never or only partially learn the
physically but also emotionally because if you don't,
you die or at least you face some severe consequences.
Unfortunately, less acceptable behaviors work just
as well to force the issue including substance abuse,
risky sexual escapades, and even criminal behavior.
Along with requiring added stimulation, the prob
lem also makes it more difficult than usual to re
cover from traumatic events, including war or sexual
assault. In fact, according to Stone's paper, those
with compromised ability to regulate their emotions
experience a wider array of psychiatric disorders.
"The experience of families in stress. . .was the cru
cible of child development for Tribal families and
their children across the past five hundred years,"
Stone wrote.
Stone traced the postcolonial period almost gen
eration by generation, starting with biological war
fare in which colonizers treated Indians to blankets
laced with smallpox; to the Indian Wars when sol
diers attacked Tribal communities often when
the men were gone with "grapeshot," or the metal
sweepings off a blacksmith's floor, because it was
cheaper than regular gunshot, (and as a side issue,
also was laced with horse feces from the blacksmith
floors, meaning that even slight wounds caused
deadly infections); to the Indian boarding schools (run
both by the government and religious orders) where
the aim was to wipe out the Indian language and
culture, and where rules were sometimes enforced
with physical and sexual abuse, which Indians then
brought back to their families as accepted methods
"The experience of families in stress. . . was the crucible of child
development for Tribal families and their children across the
past five hundred years. "
"Joseph Stone Ph.D.
Behavioral Health Director
""Tiiiffwii '"iif Tl i nm-Hr'f',!'nU-
Chemawa Indian School is one of many boarding schools
across the country for Indian youth. The history of
the boarding schools is a checkered one, particularly in
past years, with many Indians suffering horribly from
the experience of being torn from home, family and
language. Dr. Stone cites these experiences in his
analysis of how colonial oppression continues to affect
Indians today.
ability to regulate their
own emotions. As a result, the children need to in
dulge in risky behavior that makes that regulation
more imperative.
If you are rock climbing, for example, it is more
imperative that you behave in appropriate ways
of discipline. "Thus," Stone wrote, "a generation of
situational molestation or sexual abuse is introduced
into the Tribal communities as yet another form of
learned behavior derivative from the boarding school
era."
"Tribal people, as a subgroup, are the most deco
rated Veterans of foreign war in this country," wrote
Stone. And these warriors are not alone in return
ing from war with posttraumatic stress, but add to
that for Natives, returning to a terminated reserva
tion. Stone cited from a study showing that the ef
fect of termination on posttraumatic stress in Indi
ans "was ten times that of the U.S. population at
large."
The generation returned from war to relocation in
a city, where substance abuse sometimes accompa
nied poverty, lack of language and job skills and "on
going racism and oppression." And because "the
dynamics of racism and oppression are becoming
quite sophisticated," Stone wrote, Tribal people in
ternalized the process and identified it as self-image.
Today, "this generation of Tribal people. . .may have
a child of four years of age who is reported into the
child protective service system because the parents
are substance abusing."
"These are the issues of the current First Nation
generation in the U.S.A.: poverty, substance abuse,
psychiatric disorders, oppressive political and racial
systems and agenda, culturally inappropriate child
protection efforts and treatment methods, and the
cumulative effects of several generations of
postcolonial stress."
And others in the work group had specific experi-
ences of these effects: "you know, I just kept hearing
my grandma saying, 'I could never hug my kids,'
said Dr. Paulette Running Wolf, Ph.D., (Blackfeet
Cree), a senior scientist providing site liaison ser
vices to the American IndianAlaskan Native grant
communities that are participating in the national
evaluation of mental health services for children. "I
said, "Why, grandma? What do you mean you could
never hug your kids?" She said, "Because I thought
I had TB and if you had TB you were taken away
and put in an institution and you were never seen
again."
Stone's paper supported principles for continued
research in Indian communities suggested by an
other researcher: Tribal oversight; the training and
employment of Tribal members as project staff; Tribal
facilitators, and most important, the use of "cultur
ally specific interventions (derived from Tribal be
liefs and values, not adapted from elsewhere)."
Dr. Walter Hillabrant, Ph.D. (Citizen
I
25
Potawatomi), a clinical psychologist serving as Tech
nical Director for the Committee on Benefits of the
National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Depen
dence, cautioned about "constructs and theories and
nroDositions which aren't testable." He said. "I chal-
lenge people who want to explain lots of things. . .in
terms of postcolonial stress, that they be able to ar
ticulate areas of discourse that would be inconsis
tent with that."
As part of the process, benefits and successes must
be factored in, Stone agreed, and concluded by adapt
ing the advice of the pioneering psychologist Carl
Jung: "I would rather we be whole than good that
we have our history, we have our shadow we have
to grow."
The paper came out of years of working with this
subject matter, said Stone. From the time of his
brother's suicide, he was asking himself, "Where does
it fit together across time?' He had been talking
about it for years and finally, he said, "People began
to challenge me to write it."
When it finally came out, he was before a group of
Native people. "It was like I was on auto-pilot." He
was in front of a white board. He found himself
writing down the theory "level by level" almost with
out knowing it. "It took me 35 minutes to get it all
down." There was a pregnant pause in the room
and then he heard the words, "Dr. Stone, I'll buy
that theory."
The other piece of this, according to Stone, is that
Native people have to "own our presence within the
time line. Then we own the effects in ourselves."
"It's an incredibly painful theory," he said.