Your Path to Our Health originated in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s desire to inform its staff about the cultural practices of indigenous peoples (see https://hollywoodhealthandsociety.org/events/exploring-cultures-health). The concept quickly grew: beyond RWJF staff to all sectors with a role to play in building a Culture of Health, and beyond tribal communities to other groups with distinctive cultures.  

We’re open to a range of ways in which communal norms, practices, attitudes influence health.  We’re building a digital learning tool that uses stories to provoke Culture of Health builders to ask that question for themselves.  So in selecting the stories, we’ve had to ask ourselves the same question. 

One thing I’ve learned is that we have to be very careful not to assume that culture functions in the same way in different cultures.  We can’t, for instance, extrapolate from tribal culture to others.  Consider this recent story about inspiring youth to avoid drugs through re-appropriating a traditional canoe journey.   The issue here is ‘cultural stripping’.  The tribal response to debilitating historical trauma is to take their culture back.  The idea of reviving cultural traditions is coherent and accessible.  In fact, the risk for Culture of Health sectors who are seeking culturally appropriate ways to work with tribal peoples is that we’ll revert to stereotypes.  As one member of our Advisory Group said, “those who want to be helpful sometimes imagine restoring Indians to tepees on a plain.” The canoe journey story — and some of the ones we’ll be telling — may look nostalgic at first blush. But tribal peoples are actually reinventing and repurposing culture to address current challenges.

Compare the situation of immigrants.   The canoeing article refers to ‘reversing the trauma of assimilation.” Yet immigrants almost always assimilate, even if it takes a generation.  Whether or not this is healthy is another story.  Among Latinos, recent immigrants live longer than their native-born kin.   Are cultural factors — diet, extended families, parenting practices — one reason? 

And the history of African-Americans puts yet another spin on culture.  African Americans don’t have ready access to a culture that predates slavery.  As another member of our Advisory Group told us,  “in the South the people who were former slaves, their food was the scraps on the table. The way we cook and eat and way we address food comes from that. Gumbo is made of left overs. It wasn’t as if we had a choice – this is part of who we were – carried forward. Our culture is one of survival and resiliency. That is the culture of African-Americans in this country. I don’t know if you can call it culture. It wasn’t a choice we were making.”

 

*image via Yes Magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/good-health/drug-use-down-hope-up-a-canoe-journey-inspires-native-youth-20151210