UAF
Department of Anthropology
Student Research Abstract
Stacy Michelle Rasmus
Youth Culture and Mental Health in Contemporary Alaskan Inuit Communities: Social Movements of Survival and Change in the North
Abstract:
Youth in Inuit communities in Alaska are reported in the scientific and popular press to experience some of the highest rates of suicide and substance abuse in the Nation; with the suicide rate among youth in some Inuit communities in Alaska ranking among the highest in the world. Yet very little else is known about the everyday lives of these young people, and there has been almost no attempt to represent Alaska Native youth as autonomous and effective agents of change who live out their lives on the local cusps of national and global influence. This study will contribute to an understanding of youth, youth culture and the current mental health status of young people in modern Alaskan Inuit villages by asking the following research questions: What is it like to be a young person in a modern Alaska Native village? How has the experience of youth in the villages changed over time? What are the primary ‘problems of youth’ from their own perspective, and the perspective of the community? How do young people and adults bring their culture to bear on the construction of their own age-graded explanatory models of norms, behaviors, experience and emotions (Kleinman 1988)? How does the collective experience of the social group transform into a shared cultural framework with constructive and destructive potential for individuals? What local solutions and interventions are currently available to address the problems of youth, and are they responsive and consistent with the cultural norms and behaviors of young Inuit? This study works from the hypothesis that youth culture in contemporary Inuit communities throughout the Circumpolar North represents an adaptive social strategy creatively engaged by young people in response to rapid social change and cultural continuity (e.g. Condon 1987). Inuit youth in modern, rural villages experience a social world unlike that of their ancestors, and active engagement within the youth culture is the way that many young Inuit develop themselves socially, sexually and emotionally. It is proposed that youth cultures have gained primary force for social movement, survival and self-destruction in contemporary village life. The study design will involve the synthesis of multi-site data including; life history interviews from a nationally funded research project of Alaska Native pathways towards sobriety, field observations from a 16-month clinical residence in four Yup’ik villages and interviews conducted in Fairbanks with Yup’ik college students in their late stage youth from the four fieldwork villages. There is a conspicuous absence of cross-cultural ethnographic research on youth, adolescence and mental health. This research has the goal of contributing to the development of age-graded, culturally-based mental health prevention and intervention strategies for youth in villages and other rural areas.