This study examined early adolescent risk for substance use in a sample of 1,170 sixth and seventh graders. Risk was assessed by inspecting the predictive strength of thirteen continuous variables from the interpersonal (peer pressure, peer substance use, parental monitoring, parent-child involvement, academic achievement, and school adjustment) and intrapersonal (self efficacy, impulsivity, withdrawal, depression, somatization, delinquency, and aggression) domains. Consistent with expectations, mean levels of substance use did not differ by gender or ethnicity (Caucasians and Hispanics). In addition, model-free LISREL analyses revealed underlying process similarity of predictors between sixth and seventh graders and between Caucasians and Hispanics. Interpersonal variables accounted for significantly more variance in early adolescent lifetime substance use than intrapersonal variables (39% versus 25%). Finally, weighting continuous independent predictors did not meaningfully improve prediction of lifetime substance use. The importance of process similarity and the significance of the peer domain in early adolescent substance use are discussed.

American Indian students have historically been underrepresented in higher education. Graduation and persistence rates for American Indians are distressingly low. Increasing Indian student retention has become a priority on many campuses. At the University of Arizona, a wing within a residence hall was reserved for American Indian students as part of a recruitment and retention program. The purpose of this thesis was to describe and assess the history, development and implementation of the American Indian wing. All of the traditional predictors for academic success show that the residents of the wing were at risk for dropping out of college. All of the first year students who lived on the wing were enrolled in Spring 1994. Given this important indicator the wing was a success. The American Indian wing was the beginning of a retention program that encourages Indians to remain at college without compromising cultural values.

This study sought to examine patterns of acculturation among a sample of 18 Mexican American college students and to compare them with participants' scores on a self-esteem scale, which was selected as a measure of adjustment. Mendoza's Cultural Life Style Inventory was used to assess acculturation due to its ability to provide a more precise profile of acculturation. Self-esteem was measured with the 10-item Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale. Although the findings did not indicate a statistically significant correlation between the two, the data contained in the acculturation assessments, particularly, suggested some interesting indications to the effect that while most have an overall dominant tendency of cultural shift, the tendencies exhibited in several individual dimensions more frequently tended to be cultural incorporation or cultural resistance. It was also noted that the self-esteem scores tended to be quite high.

This work investigates the ideological content of Brazilian comics created under the military dictatorship of 1964-1985. The comics promote a vision of national history and identity that corresponds to the military's focus on industrialization. Brazilian history is portrayed as a peaceful transition to a modern, urban nation of white, middle class, rigidly gendered nuclear families. Despite explicit messages of equality, social groups are implicitly subordinated in a hierarchy of social place according to region, race, ethnicity, class, and gender. Recognizing the processes through which the subordination of social groups is legitimated and protest suppressed is essential to combating inequality in contemporary Brazil.

Mixed-blood Indians have occupied a strategic role in American history since Europeans first reached this continent. However, the concept of a mixed-blood Indian is too complex to be limited to a biological construct; the mixed-blood Indian represents a class, as well as a race, of people. This analysis of the social construction of the mixed-blood Indian is conducted on three levels, (1) an historiographical approach which examines the study of the mixed-blood topic, (2) a historical analysis, using federal Indian policy and Indian literature as indicators of the mixed-blood social experience and (3) the case study of Mickey Free, the socially-constructed mixed-blood Apache. The study of mixed-blood Indians comprises a study in race, gender and power relations. It is also a study on the final American frontier.

This thesis is a description and analysis of various types of hegemonic changes that have occurred and are occurring in Otavalo, Ecuador. These changes are part of a process of change that extends back in time to 1483 and probably much earlier. Woven into the tapestry of this work is the history of the Inca and Spanish conquests in the area of Otavalo/Imbabura. I exemplify that cultural and ideological changes due to earlier conquests were brought about primarily through the use of extreme force. There was great resistance to Inca and Spanish hegemony. The glaring difference in the present day western hegemonic conquest is that there is little resistance to this form of hegemony. The forces of western hegemony are permeating Otavaleno culture not through armed force but through technology and western ideology.

This thesis focuses on the history of a group of Lakota people who moved from the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota to Alliance, a small railroad and agricultural town in the Nebraska panhandle between the 1940s and 1960s. This study addresses a gap in the research about Indian peoples in this century by virtue of its focus on a small off-reservation community. It examines the part Indians played in the local economy and explores the inter-racial dynamics affecting that role. Class and social distinctions structured Alliance's community life. Attention to key factors--federal Indian policy, military presence, labor patterns, law enforcement, corporations, railroad employment policies, and establishment of the Indian Social Center in 1949 by the United Church Women--illustrates how class and race affected Alliance's citizens. Narratives were collected from twelve residents in order to bring personal voices to the work.

For my Master of Arts in American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona I have done a comparative analysis of the Docent program's at the Arizona State Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian. A docent program or guided tour program, is part of educational programing at each museum. In order to fully understand and appreciate objects in a museum, especially those in exhibits dealing with Native Americans, requires interpretation. The guided tour is one of the most popular interpretive techniques. In this particular study, I focus on the use of storytelling as an interpretive technique. This study was done in an educational setting through informal observation of the docents, personal interviews and discussion with the docents and Educational Coordinators at each museum, examination of educational training, examination of Native American education techniques, and investigation of storytelling and its relationship to museums and Native peoples.

Responses of ten Native American men, who reported being homeless for at least six months, waiver slightly from the hypothesis that their concept of home denotes community, family, and an indigenous connection to the land. However, they did strategically cope to create home-like atmospheres. Direct answers show that home provides basic necessities, safety, and emotions of well-being, like belonging. Scrutiny of the complete contexts of these men's lives show that friendship often replaced a lack of family. Some participants referred to an indigenous connection to the land and to home as being more than one place, including a natal reservation. Adoption and a period of time away from culture, an uprootedness, also characterized these lives. Researcher recommendations include a permanent wet/dry residence, a camping area, and provisions for more culturally specific homeless services.

To compare maternal prenatal attachment between Anglo and Mexican American women, 68 low-risk primigravidae at 23 to 41 weeks gestation were recruited from childbirth classes, prenatal clinics, and a private obstetrician's office. The respondents completed a questionnaire that included the Muller Prenatal Attachment Inventory as well as provided information on ethnic identity and demographic variables. The questionnaires were available in both English and Spanish. There were no significant differences on maternal prenatal attachment scores between Anglo and Mexican American mothers in this sample. One of the most significant findings was that the women in this sample who were taking prenatal classes tended to be younger and have lower educational and income levels.