“Being on the walk put it somewhere in my body”: The meaning of place in health for Indigenous women

ABSTRACT

Relationship to place is integral to Indigenous health. A qualitative, secondary phenomenological analysis of in-depth interviews with four non-Choctaw Indigenous women participating in an outdoor, experiential tribally specific Choctaw health leadership study uncovered culturally grounded narratives using thematic analysis as an analytic approach. Results revealed that physically being in historical trauma sites of other Indigenous groups involved a multi-faceted process that facilitated embodied stress by connecting participants with their own historical and contemporary traumas. Participants also experienced embodied resilience through connectedness to place and collective resistance. Implications point to the role of place in developing collective resistance and resilience through culturally and methodologically innovative approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous
• place
• health
• historical trauma
• resilience

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Acknowledgments

With gratitude to Dr. Jordan Lewis and Dr. Susan Kemp for their editorial assistance.

Disclosure statement

The authors reported no potential conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported, in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Drug Abuse Grant 1R01DA037176 and Contract HHSN271201200663P, and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Grant P60MD006909. This work was also supported in part by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Grant 5T06SM060560.