<p> Postpartum depression (PPD) is linked to diminished maternal, pediatric, and family health outcomes and is designated as the most common childbirth complication. PPD is an international public health concern and found in most populations. Studies suggest that American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) women suffer higher PPD prevalence (14% to 29%) than other United States' women, revealing a racial/ethnic disparity. Health disparities research is a national public health priority and substantiates the need to explore PPD in AI/AN women. Clinicians define PPD as an episode of major depressive disorder with a "peripartum onset" specifier that occurs within the first year after delivery. </p><p> This dissertation work explored and synthesized PPD research about AI/AN women, where there remains considerable mystery surrounding the causes and consequences of PPD. Even with federal regulations in place requiring the inclusion of minorities and women and other underrepresented groups in research, AI/AN women have been mostly excluded, as evidenced by few studies and small sample compositions that include AI/AN women in PPD research. </p><p> Using a comparative analysis approach, validation studies of the EPDS and the PHQ-9 were examined. While possessing excellent concurrent validity, the low predictive accuracy of both tools in non-Western samples suggests cultural bias. No PPD screening instrument has been validated in samples of AI/AN women. Cross-cultural adaptation advances the science of comparative effectiveness research, and is therefore a logical next step. Using a phenomenological methodology with a community-based participatory approach, AI/AN women's "lived" PPD experiences were described. AI/AN women who experienced PPD now or in the past were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. De-identified demographic data were collected. Thematic analysis guided by Moustakas' (1994) procedure followed and seven major themes emerged. </p><p> This dissertation has advanced nursing science by providing an understanding of PPD in AI/AN women. Future research for AI/AN women with PPD should focus on: 1) their access to and use of PPD services; 2) the cross-cultural adaptation for PPD screening; 3) the possible relationship between PPD and intimate partner violence; 4) their preferences for PPD treatment; and 5) the possible relationship between PPD and acculturation.</p><p>

As a group, Native American youth have elevated rates of delinquency and substance use. However, research specifically examining the etiology of delinquency among Native American youth is sparse. In order to fill this gap, this study utilized a general strain theory (GST) framework integrated with feminist criminological insights and an indigenist stress-coping model (ISCM) to examine the impact of victimization as a source of strain (i.e., interpersonal victimization, sexual assault, and peer assault) on delinquent outcomes (i.e., violent and property delinquency, alcohol and marijuana use) among a sample of Native American youth attending school (and likely residing) on or near Indian reservations. This study utilized secondary data from the third wave of the Drug Use Among Young American Indians: Epidemiology and Prediction: 1993-2006 and 2009-2013 study (N = 2,457). Partial proportional odds (PPO) models were estimated to examine the potential non-linear effects of victimization on delinquency while ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were estimated to test the mediation and moderation hypotheses within GST. Models were estimated for the total sample and for males and females separately to assess for gender differences in GST processes. Special attention was paid to the role of Native American cultural identity as a moderator in the strain - delinquency relationship. Results indicate mixed support for hypotheses drawn from GST.

There are currently no research studies that investigate the relationship between acculturation and leadership values and practices among the Indigenous Tribes on the Northern Plains of the United States. The study was initiated because Native American Elders on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation were concerned that traditional altruistic leadership style was being lost in today's Native American leadership practice. Accordingly, acculturation and servant leadership theories were used to guide the study. A sequential explanatory mixed methods design incorporated the use of quantitative data based on the Servant Leadership Profile (SLP) and the Native American Acculturation Scale. (NAAS). The study included 51 Oglala Sioux tribal leaders, program directors, elected officials and traditional headsmen. The NAAS measured the respondent's orientation towards Native American versus dominant cultural values. The SLP measured the orientation towards the practice of servant leadership. The qualitative component involved interviews with 6 tribal leaders, 2 from each level of acculturation, to increase the understanding of the relationship between cultural orientation and leadership. The levels of acculturation were low, traditional (17.6%), moderate, bicultural (68.6%) and high, assimilated (13.7%). Qualitative themes revealed leadership values similar to servant leadership among all 6 respondents regardless of acculturation level. The bi-cultural participants identified in my study may create innovative ways of defining themselves and society itself for purposes of social change bridging the gap between divisions of traditional and assimilated individuals.

YURUPARY ORIGINS OF A FEMININE-MASCULINE DUALITY: THE 'SHAMANIC FLIGHT' OF THE DAUGHTERS OF THE MOON IN THE TUKANO ORAL TRADITION OF THE VAUPES REGION OF COLOMBIA is a multidisciplinary comparative study between five versions of the Yurupary myth of the Vaupes region of Colombia that is a significant part of the collective memory, culture and oral tradition of the Amazonian Region. The vuelo chamanico (principal theme of the fifth version) made by the two women the main characters, symbolizes among other intertwined themes in the narration: the origin of women's wisdom in the Tukanoan tradition These versions are: Yurupary-Mito, Leyenda y Epopeya del Vaupes: Con la traduccion de la 'Leggenda dell'Jurupary' del conde Ermanno Stradelli por Susana N. Salessi by Hector H. Orjuela (1983). Text I in Yurupari Studies of an Amazonian Foundation Myth by Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (1996). The third and fourth versions in La oralidad en Yurupary o la exegesis de lo inaccesible: estudio comparativo entre el texto del conde Ermanno Stradelli y una transcripcion de don Antonio Guzman y Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (Carriazo Osorio y el Abuelo Miru Puu, 2002) were given by el Abuelo Miru Puu in 2001 and 2002. The latter was a storyteller of the Mimi-Pora indigenous people of the Vaupes And the fifth version of the myth corresponds also to the Abuelo Miru Puu given in Spanish to Ariel Jose James: MASA BEHKE YURUPARY MITO TUKANO DEL ORIGEN DEL HOMBRE (2003) I propose that the fifth version, MASA BEHKE YURUPARY MITO TUKANO DEL ORIGEN DEL HOMBRE, is closer to representing the indigenous people's mythical reality of this particular Latin American region, while earlier versions such as the Leyenda del Yurupary , 1890 translated from Nengatu language into Italian by Ermanno Stradelli and the Text I, by the anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff represent theoretical assertions of the western mind, being translated and not transcribed. I reconstruct the concepts of myth and mythological reality (oral history) and I propose that even while these two versions deal with symbology and metaphorical language, the fifth version is the one that is viewed as part and parcel of the daily life of the indigenous people of the region. The European tendency of viewing mythology with a heroic (thus unreal) zeal is contrary to the native ideology, which is ontological / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation examines early-nineteenth-century Native American incarceration in the upper Mississippi Valley between 1803 and 1849. Drawing upon military and government documents, court records, treaties, and legal questions under the Trade and intercourse Acts--as well as upon memoirs, travel narratives and newspaper articles--it explores how and why United States officials routinely incarcerated Native American men living on those lands which now comprise the states of Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. It details the experiences of Indian prisoners held in military fort guardhouses and small town jails as they endured and negotiated the terms of their incarcerations, with the assistance of family and tribal communities on the "outside." During the early nineteenth century, before the establishment of large state penitentiaries in the upper Mississippi Valley--Native American men in the region faced two forms of incarceration: they were either held in municipal and county jails as "murder" suspects for civil trial, or they were detained in military fort guardhouses as hostages for the future "good conduct" of their respective villages, bands and/or tribes. I argue that in both cases, imprisonment was intended to be both punitive and reformative and was inseparable from federal geopolitical maneuverings that enabled U.S. conquest of the region--in the name of "peace." Whether Native men were held in municipal jails for civil trials, or in military guardhouses as hostages, their incarceration was directly, or indirectly, tied to the social control of larger Native collectivities and worked to bolster U.S. military, political, legal and economic hegemony in the region. As such, these carceral practices constituted a glaring contradiction of U.S. officials' often repeated dictum that as "fair" and "benevolent" arbiters of "Indian affairs," they would never punish the "innocent" for the behaviors of the "guilty." Moreover, the legal and geopolitical status of imprisoned Indian men during this period was marked nebulous, fluid, and expedient, for it was contingent upon the nonspecific legalese of various treaties and federal laws as well as upon U.S. officials' ever-changing, on-the-ground geopolitical calculations. This dissertation intervenes in histories of nineteenth-century U.S. penology and of Anglo-American conquest in the upper Mississippi Valley which essentially ignore the significance of Indian incarceration and the experiences of Native prisoners. It also intercedes in the sizeable body of work concerning the Sauk leader Black Hawk and his "war" against the United States in the summer of 1832. Arguably, Black Hawk became--and has remained--the most prominent of Indian prisoners in the region. However, accounts of Black Hawk have failed to consider his incarceration within the larger carceral landscape to which Indian men were routinely subjected; moreover, those accounts have neglected the significance of Indian incarceration (beyond Black Hawk's) to military officials' prosecution of the Black Hawk war.

What is the relationship between environment and tribal sovereignty, and what is the value of tribally-controlled land in the twenty-first century? This dissertation turns to the Meskwaki Nation, the only resident Native American community in Iowa, to provide a long-term perspective on the benefits and pitfalls of tribal land reclamation. Rather than focusing on dispossession, it emphasizes how one tribe reacquired its land base following removal. In the process, it shows how environment and sovereignty are sources of political and economic leverage for Native communities. They are useful categories for organizing Native histories and understanding how environmental, political, and economic interactions have shaped and been shaped by Indigenous struggles for sovereignty and self-determination. This work examines how the unique status of the Meskwaki “settlement,” which is not a “reservation” because the tribe purchased it with tribal money in 1857, has expanded the tribe’s capacity for self-determination. The Meskwaki story confirms that increasing tribal land holdings—as well as tribal control over them—provides an anchor from which tribes can maintain their sovereignty, creates opportunities for self-determination, and offers tribes political and economic leverage. But land reclamation is not a silver bullet that can solve the many problems faced by Native Nations today. Rather, tribal land (and by extension, the environments on it) is a political tool that can be deployed in defense of tribal sovereignty. By recognizing the potential of tribally-controlled land to create leverage within the paradigms of state/tribal and federal/tribal politics, tribes can utilize their land bases as sovereign, political territory and pursue economic and political strategies that can empower their continuing recovery from the processes of colonization.

This study investigated romantic relationship attitudes and experiences as factors of interethnic romantic relationships among Native American (NA) emerging adults. The study included 114 participants ages 18 to 25 years from about 70 NA indigenous groups across North America. Factors were organized into the moral, societal, and psychological domains of the social-cognitive domain theory. Factors identified by this study included four significant predictors of past interethnic dating and three significant predictors of future likelihood of NA dating among emerging adults with differences between NA relationships with Whites or with other minorities. Past dating experiences associated with strong White identity, past multicultural interaction, diversity climate in childhood community, and past parental support of interethnic dating relationships. Future likelihood of engagement in interethnic romantic relationships for NA emerging adults associated with past interethnic dating and other multicultural interactions. Past multicultural interactions was the only predictor that emerged in NA romantic relationships with both Whites and other minorities.

Native American youth often experience high rates of environmental risk factors that may put them at increased risk for developing psychological problems, yet research within this high-risk population is severely limited. The present study was designed to provide information on the rate of psychological symptoms in a sample of Native American youth, and evaluate the impact of environmental factors (risk, protective, and cultural) on psychological disorder symptoms over time. Data were collected with a sample of Native American youth using the Youth Self Report, the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory-Adolescent 2, and a researcher-designed Biodemographic Questionnaire. Findings indicate that clinically significant levels of depression and anxiety from the Native American adolescent sample were similar to levels found in the general population of adolescents, while clinically significant levels of conduct disorder and substance use disorders were higher than rates found in the general population. Findings with respect to the impact of environmental factors indicate that higher scores on the overall risk index were associated with higher levels of all four psychological disorder symptom scales. However, high scores on the protective index were associated with lower levels of depression and conduct disorder symptoms but unrelated to anxiety and substance use. The overall cultural index was unrelated to all four psychological symptom scales. When subscales were examined, only the risk subscales were related to psychological disorder symptoms. Results from the longitudinal analysis indicated that the risk, protective, and cultural index scores at Time 1, as a group, were predictive of anxiety, conduct disorder, and substance symptoms at Time 2, but unrelated to Time 2 depression scores. However, individually, the three index scores were generally not predictive of psychological symptoms with the exception of a positive association between Time 1 risk index scores and substance symptoms at a later date.

Coles Creek diet traditionally was believed to have been based on maize agriculture due to the number, size, and complexity of Coles Creek sites. However, direct archaeological evidence in the form of maize kernels and pollen generally has been lacking. This bioarchaeological study of nine skeletal samples from the southern Lower Mississippi Valley further supports the view that Coles Creek diet was not based on maize agriculture. Data from stable isotopes, dental, and skeletal pathologies were evaluated by comparisons to data from hunter-gatherer, mixed, and agricultural populations taken from the literature, through the use of a modified Dental Pathology Profile (DPP), and among temporal and regional categories defined by the populations examined in this study Based on the modified DPP and comparisons to the literature, the Coles Creek data collected in this study are more similar to hunter-gatherer populations or those with a transitional-mixed subsistence base than to agricultural populations. Dental pathologies and stable isotopes indicate that, though their consumption gradually increased, dietary carbohydrates remained a minor component of the diet throughout the Coles Creek period. Also, non-specific pathologies in both adults and subadults indicate that childhood morbidity and mortality increased during this time. Finally, data from this study suggest that regional differences in resource exploitation existed between coastal and inland populations during the Coles Creek period / acase@tulane.edu

The Dog Child site (FbNp-24) is located within the confines of the Wanuskewin Heritage Park, approximately 3 km north of the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It is a multicomponent site containing six occupation levels. The site was excavated throughout the 2004, 2005, and 2006 field seasons with the assistance of the University of Saskatchewan archaeological field school and the Saskatchewan Archaeological Society field school. Projectile point, pottery, and other technologies deemed specific to a cultural period, in addition to radiocarbon age assessment, have revealed six occupations related to five different series or complexes. These include the Plains Side-Notched complex, Prairie Side-Notched complex, Duncan/Hanna complex, Oxbow complex, and Mummy Cave series. Two levels have been ascribed to the latter series. The Mummy Cave series occupation is an area of focus as it contributes to our knowledge surrounding Northern Plains occupation during the Mid-Holocene Climatic Optimum. The archaeological artifacts and features in addition to the geoarchaeological setting have been documented in order to create a comparative survey expressing the context and extent of these cultural periods.