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"What we know is how we've survived": Tribal Emergency Management and the Resilience Paradox

In order to more fully inform moves toward equity in emergency management (EM), this research seeks to describe a general landscape of professional Tribal EM, and in particular, to examine how Tribal emergency managers and Tribal Nations are situated in relation to the EM enterprise (EME), and how they are doing resilience in their Tribal Nations. The findings presented in this dissertation reflect efforts to explore and document Tribal emergency managers' descriptions of their work and their perceptions about its context as they seek to do resilience in their Tribes. Specifically, qualitative interviews were conducted with Tribal emergency managers whose Tribal Nations span the United States. Findings indicate that there is significant variation among Tribal nations in terms of EM structures and capacities; Tribal emergency managers engage in a wide array of activities to promote resilience in their communities; and Tribal EM is becoming increasingly professionalized. Importantly, however, the research also uncovered a paradox in which Tribal emergency managers, both implicitly and explicitly excluded from the EME in many ways, find themselves doing resilience in the context of an increasingly popular disaster resilience paradigm that both increasingly shifts the burden of resilience to the local level, and expands the range of tasks associated with successful resilience processes. The dissertation concludes by discussing conceptual and practical implications of the research as well as directions for future research in this area.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc1944363
Date05 1900
CreatorsDent, Lauren
ContributorsWebb, Gary, Ignatow, Gabriel, Sobering, Katherine
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
FormatText
RightsPublic, Dent, Lauren, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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