|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
Understanding the Relational Worldview in Indian Families |
|||||
|
Document Author:
Terry Cross, M.S.W., Executive Director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association |
|||||
|
The European and American linear worldview dominates social services to Indian families. These families, however, use a relational worldview in their thinking. Understanding this worldview enhances the ICW worker's ability to provide services. On our globe today there are two predominant worldviews, linear and relational. The linear worldview is rooted-in European and mainstream American thought. It is very temporal, and it is firmly rooted in the logic that says cause has to come before effect. In contrast, the relational worldview sees life as harmonious relationships where health is achieved by maintaining balance between the many interrelating factors in one's circle of life. Understanding these worldviews and how they relate to Indian child welfare work can serve to enhance an ICW worker's ability to meet their community's needs. Worldview is a term used to describe the collective thought process of a people or culture. Thoughts and ideas are organized into concepts. Concepts are organized into constructs and paradigms. Paradigms linked together build a worldview. This article will summarize both worldviews and show how family functioning can be understood from the relational view. The linear worldview finds its roots in Western European and American thought. It is logical, time oriented and systematic, with cause and effect relationships at its core. To understand the world is to understand the linear cause and effect relationships between events. In human services, workers are usually taught that if we can understand the causes of a problem, by taking a social history, then we will better know how to help. Interventions are targeted to the cause or symptom and the relationship between the intervention and the symptoms are measured. Yet, the linear view is narrow. It inhibits us from seeing the whole person. It is not good or bad. It simply is, and in the U.S. it is dominant. Indian child welfare workers need to be able to understand this thinking because they will encounter it in the mainstream system. Historically, however, Indian peoples have not used linear cause and effect thinking. Rather, the approach could be called a relational or cyclic view. The relational worldview, sometimes call the cyclical worldview, finds its roots in tribal cultures. It is intuitive, non-time oriented and fluid. The balance and harmony in relationships between multiple variables including spiritual forces make up the core of the thought system. Every event is in relation to all other events regardless of time, space or physical existence. Health exists only when things are in balance or harmony. In the relational worldview, helpers and healers are taught to understand problems through the balances and imbalances in the person's relational world. We are taught to see and accept complex (sometimes illogical) inter-relationships that can be influenced by entering the world of the client and manipulating the balance contextually, cognitively, emotionally, physically and/or spiritually. Interventions need not be logically targeted to a particular symptom or cause, but rather are focused on bringing the person back into balance. Nothing in a person's existence can change without all others things being changed as well. Thus, an effective helper is one who gains understanding of the complex interdependent nature of life and learns how to use physical, psychological, contextual and spiritual forces to promote harmony.
Cause –––––––––► Effect –––––––––► New Cause –––––––––► New Effect ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––► Social History –––► Symptoms –––► Treatment Plan –––► Goal of Treatment
The relational world model for assessing family problems can be illustrated through a four-quadrant circle. The four quadrants represent four major forces or sets of factors that together must come into balance. They are the context, the mind, the body and the spirit. The mind includes our cognitive processes such as thoughts, memories, knowledge and emotional processes such as feelings, defenses and self-esteem. The body includes all physical aspects such as genetic inheritance, gender and condition as well as sleep, nutrition and substance use. The context includes culture, community, family, peers, work, school and social history. The spiritual area includes both positive and negative learned teachings and practices as well as positive and negative metaphysical or innate forces. These four quadrants are in constant flux and change. We are not the same person at 4 p.m. that we were at 7 a.m. Our level of sleep is different, our nutrition is different and our context is likely different. Thus, behavior will be different, feeling will be different and what we think about will be different. The system is constantly balancing and re-balancing itself as we change thoughts, feelings, our physical state or our spiritual state. If we are able to stay in balance we are said to be healthy, but sometimes the balance is temporarily lost. We have the capacity as humans to keep our own balance for the most part, yet our different cultures provide many mechanisms to assist in this process. Spiritual teachings, social skills and norms, dietary rules and family roles are among the myriad of ways we culturally maintain our balance. Death is an example of an event that threatens harmony. When we lose a loved one we emotionally feel grief, physically we may cry, lose appetite or not sleep well. However, spiritually we have a learned positive response, a ritual, called a funeral. Usually such events are community events, so the context is changed. We bring in relatives, friends and supporters. In that context, we intellectualize about the dead person. We may recall and tell stories about him or her. We may intellectualize about death itself or be reminded of our cultural view of that experience. Physically we touch others, get hugs and handshakes, we eat and we shed tears. These experiences are interdependent, playing off each other in multi-relational interactions, which, if successful, allow us to resolve the grief by maintaining the balance. If we cannot, then in a Western sense we are said to have unresolved grief or, in some tribal cultures, to have a ghost sickness or to be bothered by a spirit. Different worldviews often use different conceptual language to describe the same phenomenon.
When doing an assessment of an Indian family, the worker needs to look not
only for linear cause and effect relationships to isolate the causal factors,
but also ask, "What are the holistic and complex inter-relationships that
have disrupted the balance in the family?" "What factors can come into
harmony and allow a family to not only survive but to grow strong?" The
nature of our strengths and challenges becomes evident as we examine families
from the relational perspective. The context within which Indian families function is one filled with strength producing or harmonizing resources. Oppression, for all its damage to us, creates an environment where survival skills are developed and sharpened. We learn to have a sixth sense about where we are welcome and where we are not. We teach our children to recognize the subtle clues that may spell danger. We sit with our children at the movies or in front of the TV and interpret, cushioning the assaults of the mainstream media. We learn how to cope with the dynamics of difference and pass our strategies on to our children. The richness of our histories and heritage provide anchors, which hold us to who we are. Our relations, relatives or kin often form systems of care that are interdependent and ' system reliant. Healthy interdependence is the core of the extended family. It does not foster dependence and does not stifle independence. Rather, it is a system in which everyone contributes in some way without expectation of reciprocity. I give my cousin a ride to the store and while at the store my cousin buys some items for our grandmother. Our grandmother is home watching my brother's children who are planning to wash my car when I return home. No one person is paying back another and yet the support and help keep cycling throughout the family. The community provides additional influences. From church to social organizations to politics, we are all affected by the events in the world around us. Family resilience is supported by role models, community norms, church structures and the roles of elders and natural helpers or healers. However, we struggle with negative forces in our environments: poverty, oppression, substance abuse, unemployment, crime, trauma or any of hundreds of negative influences. Together these enter into the balance of who we are and how we cope. In the mental area, the Indian family is supported intellectually by self-talk and by the stories we hear about how others have managed. Sitting around the kitchen table or on the front steps we learn strategies for interacting with the world or how to use resources. In passing on our stories of our lives we pass on skills to our Children and we parent for resiliency. We instill the values of relationships, of getting by, of not needing and hard work for little return. Storytelling is perhaps our greatest teaching resource for communicating identity, values and life skills. The stories also let us know who our people are and what they stand for, providing role models and subtle expectations. Emotionally we learn a variety of ego defenses, which allow us to deal with overwhelming odds. Denial, splitting, disassociation and projection are each useful in their own way as mechanisms for surviving oppression. Functionality can only be understood in context. For example, many of our families know real pain and endure grief almost beyond the comprehension of middle America and yet they give back to their community. Because of oppression, substance abuse or poverty, many have learned not to need, not to feel and not to talk about it, yet they still help out at the church, at school or by giving sister a break from the kids. These are kindnesses that bring life-sustaining energy that flows from auntie's approving looks, from a child's laugh or from a pat on the back. Other emotions rob people of their resources-rage; depression, anxiety, grief and jealousy, among others-and are likely to contribute to a lack of harmony. Our people have experienced generations of loss from which we are only now beginning to recover. This sense of loss and the inter-generational grief that is a part of it are strong elements effecting the balance of our families. While for the individual we think of the physical area as concerning the body in family, it also means the family structure and roles. Kinship expressed in how we relate to our kin, how we act as a system and how we sustain each other will greatly influence the balance in our lives. The role of fathers is part of the balance, one that can contribute strength to the family system whether the father is present in the home or not. In a recent study of American Indian families that looked at child neglect and the factors which either contributed to or helped prevent it, the role of fathers was found to be central. When the father was involved in the family, child neglect was much less likely to be present. The father did not have to be present in the home for the positive effect to be felt. He only had to remain a contributing member of the family and to maintain relationships with his children. Non-custodial dads take note: your continuing relationship with your children contributes to positive outcomes. Families are better able to be resilient if they include dads. One thing that kin often do together is eating. Our special cultural or family foods, our use of foods to mark special occasions and our rituals around eating together are all contributing central to the health of the family. Spiritual influences in the family include both positive and negative learned practices. The positive practices are those we learn from various spiritual disciplines or teachers: faith, prayer, meditation, healing ceremonies or even positive thinking. They are the things we learn to do to bring about a positive spiritual outcome or to bring positive spiritual intervention. Negatively learned practices are things like curses or bad medicine. Even things like sin, promotion of chaos and perpetuation of confusion could be considered learned negative spiritual behaviors. These are things that people do to invoke negative spiritual outcomes or negative spiritual intervention. Here, our teachings and the spiritual institutions play a great role. Usually there are learned positive practices meant to counter the negative practices in us or from someone else. Often, what is considered positive in one person's faith is considered negative in another's, and the lines between the two become blurred by emotion. In Indian communities the churches and/or traditional spiritual ways play a significant role in shaping the spiritual practices of the family. In the relational worldview spiritual forces beyond our own making also influence human behavior. Luck, grace, helping spirits and angelic intervention are a few of the terms used to describe getting just the right help at just the right time. One does not have to believe in or practice any spiritual discipline to believe in or experience the phenomenon. Bad luck, bad spirits, ghosts, the devil and misfortune are a few of the terms used to describe things that bother people no matter what their spiritual practices. These forces are often turned back or controlled through prayer, rituals or ceremonies. In the relational view the casual factors are considered together. It is the interdependence of the relationships with all factors taken at once that gives understanding of the behavior. It is the constant change and interplay between various forces that account for resilience. We can count on the systems natural tendency to seek harmony. We can promote resilience by contributing to the balance. Services need not be targeted to a specific set of symptoms but rather targeted toward restoration of balance. Family support services are an example of adding to the balance. It is not, then, our extended family or church or survival skills or any other single factor that provides family harmony. It is the complex interplay between all of these factors. Getting in harmony and staying in harmony is the task. In the Western European linear assessment we are taught to examine a problem by splitting the factors into independent linear cause and effect relationships. This has value in the development of knowledge of each factor and does tend to give us specific interventions to try. However, such splitting tends to leave us with incomplete knowledge and services which fail to acknowledge the spirit. In the linear view the person owns or is the problem. In the relational view the problem is circumstantial and resides in the relationship between factors. The person is not said to have a problem but to be out of harmony. Once harmony is restored the problem is gone. In the linear model we are taught to treat the person, and in the relational model we are taught to treat the balance. Today, the linear model dominates delivery of family services, yet almost half or more of all Indian clients hold a relational worldview. In Indian child welfare we have an opportunity to work within the relational worldview, to work with traditional methods of helping and healing that focus on the restoration of balance and harmony. The medicine person, elder or spiritual teacher usually work in these ways. They may work in the realm of the mind with advice, counsel or with story telling and dream work. They may work in the physical with herbs, fasting, sweat lodge or diet. They might work on the spiritual with ceremonies, healing rituals or by teaching. Always, they become part of the context of the person being helped and add to the balance with their presence and willingness to help. It is important for ICW workers to honor their own cultures in any services that intervene, assess and attempt to help Indian families.
|
|||||
|
Introduction
