Annie Zean Dunbar

As COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease) spread in the United States in Spring 2020, conventional safety nets were overwhelmed and unable to meet widespread and growing needs. Mutual aid practices proliferated as an essential form of resource provision and community care, including exchanges of food, financial assistance, and social connection. Our qualitative study interviewed 25 individuals engaged in mutual aid in Colorado, USA to investigate the perceived benefits of providing and receiving care through mutual aid in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that nonhierarchical care offered entry points to equitable ways of supporting communities through and beyond crisis. The non-hierarchical approach to care described in our study illustrated redistributed power and agency to meet community needs, and decentering institutional decision making. The experiences of mutual aid participants propose a significant ideological shift regarding our sense of care and community when conventional systems are insufficient to meet collective and individual needs, and suggest a need for future expansions of and changes to social work practice to embrace non-hierarchical care.

Rooted in Indigenist and critical feminist research principles and traditional Indigenous values and ethics in research, Ceremony-based Participatory and Practice Research (CerBPPR) is an essential approach for conducting research with, by, and for Indigenous communities. In this article, we define CerBPPR through presenting a project centering Indigenous health knowledge and storytelling, detailing the ceremonial protocols and practices interwoven throughout the research process—from design and development through data collection and dissemination. Through an examination of reflections from community members engaged in the project, core principles for research with, by, and for Indigenous peoples are illustrated as they are embodied and embedded within the CerBPPR approach. Findings from oral histories reflecting on the storytelling methods used in the research highlight the ways that community members felt healed, comforted, grateful, inspired, and connected to future generations throughout the project and demonstrate the promise of this approach as both research method and healing practice. In the spirit of feminist disruptions to mainstream research reporting, we use ceremonial prompts, moments of pause, invitations, and offerings to tap into the reader's humanity and embodied experience to approximate the sensory experience of participating in our storytelling/witnessing circle and as illustration of what is possible with CerBPPR.

Background: Diasporic Indigenous peoples of Mexico living in the United States continue to survive and reclaim their cultures despite multiple disruptions to identity formation resulting from systematic violence and cultural silencing enacted through white settler colonialism in the United States and Mexico. Honoring Indigenous survivance, the authors present a conceptual model of Indigenous identity healing and reformation that mirrors the dynamic qualities of water for Indigenous Mexican peoples living in the United States. Methods: The conceptual model arose from a ceremony-based, participatory, digital archiving project documenting Indigenous oral histories. The model is illustrated through case analysis of three Indigenous Mexican individuals living in the United States whose stories holistically represent the model’s components. Results: The case narratives illustrate how Indigenous Mexican identities are (re)formed by moving through the model components of Rift (disconnection from land, culture, and community), Longing (yearning to find what was lost), Reconnecting (reclaiming cultural practices), and Affirmation (strengthening of identity through community), via Reflection (memory work which propels movement through each stage). Conclusions: Findings suggest that identities can be (re)formed through reclaiming cultural practices and reconnecting with the community. This conceptual model may be useful for further understanding Indigenous Latinx identity development and healing.

Community based participatory research and attention to cultural resilience is recommended in HIV prevention research with Indigenous communities. This paper presents qualitative findings from evaluation of a culture-centered HIV prevention curriculum for Indigenous youth that was developed using a community based participatory research approach. Specifically, the authors focus on youth descriptions of cultural resilience and enculturation factors after participating in the curriculum. Thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with 23 youth participants yields three salient themes associated with cultural resilience and enculturation factors including: Development of cultural pride, honoring ancestors through traditional cultural practices, and acknowledging resilience and resistance within Indigenous communities. Additionally, per community directive, the authors share an observation of changes to identity descriptions from pre-curriculum baseline to post-curriculum interviews, pointing to a possible increase in awareness of Indigenous cultural identity.