Search Results (32)

El Malpais National Monument in New Mexico, USA, is a landscape of significant cultural and geological importance, characterized by extensive lava flows, caves, and cinder cones. Despite its harsh terrain, El Malpais holds deep cultural and spiritual meanings for Native American communities, including the Acoma, Zuni, Laguna, and Navajo tribes, whose cosmologies and histories are interwoven with this landscape. Employing a mixed-methods approach combining ethnographic fieldwork with comparative literature studies, this paper documents how these Indigenous groups perceive and interpret interconnected geological features as sacred and meaningful parts of their ancestral heritage. The findings reveal that volcanic landscapes are central not only to cultural origin narratives but also to ongoing rituals, resource use, and pilgrimage practices. This interconnectedness is exemplified by the cultural links between El Malpais and adjacent Mount Taylor, highlighting how geological features form a unified sacred geography. This study positions El Malpais as a culturally animated landscape, where Indigenous epistemologies and spiritual relationships with volcanic landforms challenge conventional notions of geoheritage and call for relational, community-informed approaches to heritage management. Full article

In the central Mesa Verde region, rock art occurs on canyon walls and on boulders that are frequently associated with other archaeological remains. Moreover, rock art, together with architecture and pottery, is actually a primary source of archaeological information about the presence of various cultures in the area. It includes paintings and petroglyphs of Ancestral Pueblo farming communities, images and inscriptions made by post-contact Ute and possibly Diné (Navajo) people as well as historical inscriptions of the early Euro-Americans in this area. This paper presents the results of archaeological investigations at four large rock art sites from Sandstone Canyon, southwestern Colorado, within the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument (CANM). Methods of rock art recording included advanced digital photography, photogrammetry, terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), hand tracing, and consultations with members of indigenous societies and rock art scholars. Geophysics and sondage excavations were conducted at one site revealed important information about archaeology, environment, and geology of the area. Analysis of rock art and other material evidence aims to help reconstruct and understand the mechanisms and nature of cultural changes, migrations, and human–environmental interactions and later cross-cultural contacts between indigenous peoples and Anglo-American ranchers and settlers in southwestern Colorado and the US Southwest. Full article

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for American Indian youth, far surpassing the rates of suicide experienced by other races. The White Mountain Apache Tribe has made significant impacts on suicide risk by implementing a robust suicide prevention program which includes a community-led database and case management follow-ups. Due to the success of the program in preventing suicides, the White Mountain Apache team has worked with other tribal communities to adapt the program. We wanted to understand the factors that are most important to implementing and sustaining this model and how these factors compare with existing implementation science frameworks. We employed an adapted nominal group technique to compile facilitators and barriers to implementation of the suicide prevention model across settings with five partner teams. Two researchers independently coded the resulting list of facilitators and barriers using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (version 1.0) codebook. The final list of cross-site prioritized facilitators and barriers included 41 factors. Some factors did not match easily with the framework’s constructs. The White Mountain Apache suicide prevention team noted that seven of the top prioritized factors are considerations they most try to emphasize to new communities working in suicide prevention. The factors fall into two key themes: staffing and tribal engagement. This finding affirms their focus when they conduct suicide prevention trainings with new communities and provides an opportunity for more structure and in-depth training in those two areas. Several factors could not be easily coded to the framework, especially around the sociocultural characteristics of suicide prevention work in Native communities. This contributes to the larger discussion in implementation science concerning the ways in which Indigenous approaches to public health differ from Western models. Full article

Due to historical and ongoing structural racism and settler colonialism, Indigenous Peoples and communities in the United States are at a higher risk for a variety of diseases, elevated stress, and negative mental health outcomes. In addition, the United States federal government and the public encourage a view that Indigenous Peoples are primarily a racial group. Federally-, state-, and un-recognized Indigenous Peoples have a collective right to self-determination and sovereignty, and individuals of these Peoples understand this. The goals of this scoping review were to examine what research on identity and mental well-being is currently being conducted with Indigenous populations in the United States, synthesize the results, and determine if researchers are utilizing toolsets and theories that reinforce the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples, communities, and the individual. The scoping review followed guidelines from the Joanna Briggs Institute guide for Scoping Reviews and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). Four databases and over six thousand articles were searched for this review, with twenty-four that had data extracted and analyzed. Current research on the relationship between Indigenous identity and mental well-being shows mixed results. The findings of this scoping review highlight a need for Indigenous-specific tools for measuring identity in place of tools used for other ethnic and racial groups. More research must be conducted to create tools that specifically examine the phenomena of United States-based Indigenous identity. Full article

The purpose of the Diné Teachings and Public Health Students Informing Peers and Relatives about Vaccine Education (RAVE) project was to develop strategies for health communication that addressed COVID-19 vaccine safety for residents of the Navajo Nation. The RAVE project developed a 16-week course using the Diné Educational Philosophy as a framework to train Diné College (DC) public health undergraduate students (n = 16) as health messengers to share COVID-19 vaccine safety information with unvaccinated peers and relatives. An online community survey (n = 50) was used to assess DC community vaccination perceptions to guide course development. The two primary reasons survey participants got vaccinated were to protect the health of others [82% (n = 41)] and to protect their own health [76% (n = 38)]. A pretest/post-test and a retrospective pretest (n = 13) were implemented to determine course effectiveness. A finding approaching significance was related to student confidence in being health messengers (9.1% increase). RAVE offers the first example in the published literature of successfully training American Indian undergraduate students in the context of a public health course to contribute to the response workforce during a public health crisis. Full article

The U.S. federal government manages many domestic and global operations, including environmental disasters. With the need to both mitigate and adapt to climate change, legislative and executive branches have spurred research efforts as the impacts of the Anthropocene accelerate around the country. The Army Corps of Engineers’ overlapping interest in security and providing technological answers to mitigate weather disasters has led to recent research and development, including facilitating the federal mandate to convert military fleets to electric vehicles by 2027 while also building a hydrogen fuel cell emergency operations vehicle. The emergency vehicle, H2Rescue, has recently been tested in the field, and further refinements in the technology are leading towards a transition out of development and into production. However, the engineered solution must also attend to the social dimensions of disaster relief. This paper examines past environmental disasters in one location, the Navajo Nation, to describe how the vehicle could provide a combination of technological and societal future research possibilities for environmental anthropology. Full article

The Water is K’é program was developed to increase water consumption and decrease consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages for young children and caregivers. The pilot program was successfully delivered by three Family and Child Education (FACE) programs on the Navajo Nation using a culturally centered curriculum between 2020 to 2022. The purpose of this research was to understand teacher and caregiver perspectives of program feasibility, acceptability, impact, and other factors influencing beverage behaviors due to the pilot program. Nine caregivers and teachers were interviewed between June 2022 and December 2022, and a study team of four, including three who self-identified as Navajo, analyzed the data using inductive thematic analysis and consensus building to agree on codes. Five themes emerged, including feasibility, acceptability, impact, suggestions for future use of the program, and external factors that influenced water consumption. The analysis showed stakeholders’ strong approval for continuing the program based on impact and acceptability, and identified factors that promote the program and barriers that can be addressed to make the program sustainable. Overall, the Water is K’é program and staff overcame many challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic to support healthy behavior change that had a rippled influence among children, caregivers, teachers, and many others. Full article

This paper describes a particular teacher professional development model offered in schools on and bordering the Navajo Nation in the southwestern United States. The Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators (DINÉ) offers professional development across all content areas and grade levels, but here we focus specifically on our work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content areas. Our work is situated explicitly within the literatures on Indigenous education, Native Nation Building, and culturally responsive schooling, but we also draw broadly on research in STEM education and teacher professional development. The research question explored in this paper is: To what extent and in what ways do teachers in the DINÉ develop STEM curriculum units that evidence culturally responsive principles and STEM education best practices? We share findings from three cohorts of teachers in the DINÉ’s STEM-focused professional development seminars. Teacher-authored curriculum units developed in the DINÉ were analyzed with two specific protocols: the CRAIS Tool, and the SCOOP notebook. Finally, we look closely at the curriculum units written by a single teacher in the DINÉ across the three years in order to get a clearer understanding of the nuances and richness of the findings and themes reported from the aggregate data. Full article

Background and Objective: Marked inequities in access to autism services and related health outcomes persist for U.S. children, undermining broader initiatives to advance the population’s health. At the intersection of culture, poverty, and ruralness little remains known about autism in many Indigenous communities. This qualitative study on the lived experiences of Navajo (Diné) parents raising a child with autism sought to identify factors affecting access to services. Methods: A Diné researcher conducted in-depth interviews with 15 Diné parents of children with autism living in or around the Navajo Nation. A directed content analysis approach was used to identify themes, subthemes, and connections between themes. Results: Twelve overarching themes emerged on Diné parents’ experiences accessing autism diagnostic and treatment services, as well as ways access to autism services can be improved. The following themes were related to diagnosis: the diagnostic process was often emotionally fraught; long wait times of up to years for diagnostic services were commonplace; limited clinician training and cultural humility impeded access to diagnostic services; and adequate health insurance, Indian Health Service referrals, care coordination, financial aid for travel, and efficient evaluation facilitated diagnosis. Themes on treatment access were as follows: parent perceptions of the extent to which an autism service helped their child affected access; social support helped parents to access treatment; obtaining referrals and care coordination influenced treatment access; treatment costs affected access; and service availability and geographic proximity impacted treatment access. Themes on ways to improve access to autism services were as follows: greater autism awareness is needed; autism-focused support groups may be helpful; and increased availability and quality of autism services across and around the Navajo Nation is paramount. Conclusions: Diné parents’ access to autism services was dynamically affected by sociocultural factors that must be addressed in future health equity-oriented initiatives. Full article

Native American populations experience highly disproportionate rates of poor maternal-child health outcomes. The WIC program aims to safeguard health by providing greater access to nutritious foods, but for reasons not well understood, participation in many tribally-administered WIC programs has declined to a greater extent compared to the national average decline in participation over the last decade. This study aims to examine influences on WIC participation from a systems perspective in two tribally-administered WIC programs. In-depth interviews were conducted with WIC-eligible individuals, WIC staff, tribal administrators, and store owners. Interview transcripts underwent qualitative coding, followed by identifying causal relationships between codes and iterative refining of relationships using Kumu. Two community-specific causal loop diagrams (CLDs) were developed and compared. Findings from interviews in the Midwest yielded a total of 22 factors connected through 5 feedback loops, and in the Southwest a total of 26 factors connected through 7 feedback loops, resulting in three overlapping themes: Reservation and Food Store Infrastructure, WIC Staff Interactions and Integration with the Community, and State-level Administration and Bureaucracy. This study demonstrates the value of a systems approach to explore interconnected barriers and facilitators that can inform future strategies and mitigate declines in WIC participation. Full article

From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Navajo Nation, Diné (Navajo) traditional knowledge holders (TKHs), such as medicine men and women and traditional practitioners, contributed their services and healing practices. Although TKHs are not always fully acknowledged in the western health care system, they have an established role to protect and promote the health of Diné people. To date, their roles in mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic have not been fully explored. The purpose of this research was to understand the social and cultural contexts of the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines based on the roles and perspectives of Diné TKHs. A multi-investigator consensus analysis was conducted by six American Indian researchers using interviews with TKHs collected between December 2021–January 2022. The Hózhó Resilience Model was used as a framework to analyze the data using four parent themes: COVID-19, harmony and relationships, spirituality, and respect for self and discipline. These parent themes were further organized into promoters and/or barriers for 12 sub-themes that emerged from the data, such as traditional knowledge, Diné identity, and vaccine. Overall, the analysis showed key factors that could be applied in pandemic planning and public health mitigation efforts based on the cultural perspective of TKHs. Full article

Estimates of riparian vegetation water use are important for hydromorphological assessment, partitioning within human and natural environments, and informing environmental policy decisions. The objectives of this study were to calculate the actual evapotranspiration (ETa) (mm/day and mm/year) and derive riparian vegetation annual consumptive use (CU) in acre-feet (AF) for select riparian areas of the Little Colorado River watershed within the Navajo Nation, in northeastern Arizona, USA. This was accomplished by first estimating the riparian land cover area for trees and shrubs using a 2019 summer scene from National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) (1 m resolution), and then fusing the riparian delineation with Landsat-8 OLI (30-m) to estimate ETa for 2014–2020. We used indirect remote sensing methods based on gridded weather data, Daymet (1 km) and PRISM (4 km), and Landsat measurements of vegetation activity using the two-band Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI2). Estimates of potential ET were calculated using Blaney-Criddle. Riparian ETa was quantified using the Nagler ET(EVI2) approach. Using both vector and raster estimates of tree, shrub, and total riparian area, we produced the first CU measurements for this region. Our best estimate of annual CU is 36,983 AF with a range between 31,648–41,585 AF and refines earlier projections of 25,387–46,397 AF. Full article

Many tribal populations are characterized by health disparities, including higher rates of infection, metabolic syndrome, and cancer—all of which are mediated by the immune system. Members of the Navajo Nation have suffered chronic low-level exposure to metal mixtures from uranium mine wastes for decades. We suspect that such metal and metalloid exposures lead to adverse health effects via their modulation of immune system function. We examined the relationships between nine key metal and metalloid exposures (in blood and urine) with 11 circulating biomarkers (cytokines and CRP in serum) in 231 pregnant Navajo women participating in the Navajo Birth Cohort Study. Biomonitored levels of uranium and arsenic species were considerably higher in participants than NHANES averages. Each biomarker was associated with a unique set of exposures, and arsenic species were generally immunosuppressive (decreased cellular and humoral stimulating cytokines). Overall, our results suggest that environmental metal and metalloid exposures modulate immune status in pregnant Navajo women, which may impact long-term health outcomes in mothers and their children. Full article

(1) Background: Exfoliation syndrome (XFS) is a common cause of secondary open angle glaucoma. In 1971, Faulkner et al. estimated the prevalence of XFS among 50 Navajo Nation residents as 38%. Given that XFS can cause irreversible blindness secondary to glaucoma (XFG), this study aims to identify the current prevalence of XFS among Navajo Nation residents within the Four Corners region of the U.S. (2) Methods: A retrospective chart review was conducted from 2016 to 2021 for patients aged 18 and older. All patients with XFS or XFG diagnosed by slit lamp exam were identified through chart review. (3) Results: Of the 1152 patient charts available for review, eight patients (11 eyes) were diagnosed with XFS with three patients (4 eyes) demonstrating concomitant XFG. Within this XFS population, 50% of the patients identified as male, with a mean age of 73 years. The overall prevalence of XFS was 0.7% and the overall prevalence of XFG was found to be 0.26%. The rate of XFG among patients with XFS was 37.5%. (4) Conclusion: Compared to Faulkner’s study of Navajo Nation residents in 1971, our findings show a considerably lower prevalence of XFS at 0.7%. We present the largest study to date of XFS among this population. Full article

The Navajo Nation is the largest Native American reservation by area and citizenship. The study sought to provide the first large-scale examination of ocular pathology within this population. A retrospective review of all Navajo patients seen at Moran Eye Center Navajo Nation Outreach Clinics from 2013 to 2021 for demographics, visual acuity, refractive, and eye pressure data was undergone. Further variables included comorbidity and eye diagnoses among patients at these clinics. Results: First-time patient visits totaled 2251 from 2013 to 2021. The median age was 53 (range, 18 to 92), and clinics had a predominance of female patients (1387:864). Among patients presenting without glasses, 20.67% (198/958), 9.71% (93/958), and 3.13% (30/958) had mild visual impairment (VI), moderate to severe VI, and blindness, respectively. Cataracts were the most common cause of blindness in these patients (40%, 12/30) and the need for glasses was the second most common cause (33%, 10/30). From 2016 to 2021, 17.71% (48/271) of diabetic patients were diagnosed with diabetic retinopathy (DR). Within the subset of Navajo patients that presented without any correction, 73% of bilateral blindness was preventable via glasses prescription or cataract surgery. This study comments on questions of equitable care for Navajo patients. Full article