Native Voices Exhibition: Stories of health, wellness, and illness from American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians

The U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) exhibition known as Native Voices reflected Donald A.B. Lindberg M.D.’s keen and long-held desire to help improve public understanding of Native American health challenges and honor the culture, tradition, and healing ways of Native Peoples. A centerpiece of the exhibition was a large set of video interviews that Dr. Lindberg conducted with Native health and community leaders. Dr. Lindberg and his team engaged Native advisors in the exhibition development; sought Native input through Listening Circles, Tribal Consultations; and site visits, and made the video interviews accessible via interactive kiosks and iPads. For its time, this was state-of-the-art exhibition technology. The exhibition also included Native artifacts and art works to complement the videos, including a scale model of the iconic Hokule’a Native Hawaiian voyaging canoe, and a full-size Lummi Indian healing totem pole. The totem journeyed across the U.S. prior to its installation next to the NLM herbal garden in Bethesda, MD. A traveling version of the exhibition visited more than 130 venues in 40 States across the U.S. The interview clips and other content are accessible on the exhibition website, and the full-length interviews are retained in the NLM permanent video collection.

Reflections on Dr. Donald A.B. Lindberg and Native Voices

Personal reflections on Donald A.B. Lindberg M.D. are offered by four Native American leaders who were instrumental in the successful development of the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) Native Voices Exhibition: Stories of Health and Wellness from American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. A uniquely collaborative effort, the exhibition features nearly 100 videographed interviews conducted by Dr. Lindberg with Native elders, healers, leaders, and people. He is credited with the incorporation of indigenous peoples’ healing knowledge in a personal and relational way, making for a wonderful journey together that was a very large chapter in his life and that of the authors.

Recounting coup as the recirculation of Indigenous vitality: A narrative alternative to historical trauma

Contemporary American Indians suffer from disproportionately high degrees of psychiatric distress. Mental health researchers and professionals, as well as American Indian community members, have consistently associated these disproportionate rates of distress with Indigenous historical experiences of European and Euro-American colonization. This emphasis on the impact of colonization and associated historical consciousness within tribal communities has occasioned increasingly widespread professional consideration of historical trauma among Indigenous peoples. In contrast to personal experiences of a traumatic nature, the discourse of Indigenous historical trauma (IHT) weds the concepts of “historical oppression” and “psychological trauma” to explain community-wide risk for adverse mental health outcomes originating from the depredations of past colonial subjugation through intergenerational transmission of vulnerability and risk. Long before the emergence of accounts of IHT, however, many American Indian communities prized a markedly different form of narrative: the coup tale. By way of illustration, I explore various historical functions of this speech genre by focusing on Aaniiih-Gros Ventre war narratives, including their role in conveying vitality or life. By virtue of their recognition and celebration of agency, mastery, and vitality, Aaniiih war stories functioned as the discursive antithesis of IHT. Through comparative consideration of the coup tale and the trauma narrative, I propose an alternative framework for cultivating Indigenous community “survivance” rather than vulnerability based on these divergent discursive practices.

Vaginal microbiota of American Indian women and associations with measures of psychosocial stress

Molecular-bacterial vaginosis (BV) is characterized by low levels of vaginal Lactobacillus species and is associated with higher risk of sexually transmitted infections (STI). Perceived psychosocial stress is associated with increased severity and persistence of infections, including STIs. American Indians have the highest rates of stress and high rates of STIs. The prevalence of molecular-BV among American Indian women is unknown. We sought to evaluate measures of psychosocial stress, such as historic loss (a multigenerational factor involving slavery, forced removal from one’s land, legally ratified race-based segregation, and contemporary discrimination) and their association with the vaginal microbiota and specific metabolites associated with BV, in 70 Northwestern Plains American Indian women. Demographics, perceived psychosocial stressors, sexual practices, and known BV risk factors were assessed using a modified version of the American Indian Service Utilization, Psychiatric Epidemiology, Risk and Protective Factors Project survey. Self-collected mid-vaginal swabs were profiled for bacterial composition by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and metabolites quantified by targeted liquid-chromatography mass spectrometry. Sixty-six percent of the participants were classified as having molecular-BV, with the rest being either dominated by L. crispatus (10%) or L. iners (24%). High levels of lifetime trauma were associated with higher odds of having molecular-BV (adjusted Odds Ratio (aOR): 2.5, 95% Credible Interval (CrI): 1.1–5.3). Measures of psychosocial stress, including historic loss and historic loss associated symptoms, were significantly associated with lifestyle and behavioral practices. Higher scores of lifetime trauma were associated with increased concentrations of spermine (aFC: 3.3, 95% CrI: 1.2–9.2). Historic loss associated symptoms and biogenic amines were the major correlates of molecular-BV. Historical loss associated symptoms and lifetime trauma are potentially important underlying factors associated with BV.