Recapturing Context in Behavioral Science Research: The Case of American Indian Cultural Identity

Cultural identity has loomed large in American Indian experience. For example, American Indians throughout North America have consistently implicated (post)colonial impairments in cultural identity as responsible for epidemics of social dysfunction and psychological disorder within our communities. Given the apparent centrality of identity to well-being among Native people, it seems important that behavioral scientists conceptualize and investigate this aspect of Native life in sophisticated and nuanced ways. This presentation will provide an overview of American Indian cultural identity, summarizing and evaluating a few approaches that social scientists have employed to conceptualize this key construct, with an emphasis upon the ability of variant models to effectively capture the complexities of “lived” American Indian experience. My hope is that this review will inspire young scientists-in-training to remain aware and attentive to dynamic social and cultural processes that too often get dismissed as unimportant in the workaday pursuit of scientific knowledge.