As many U.S. citizens well know, this nation’s tiny but diverse population of American Indians and Alaska Natives has endured centuries of colonial peril. Indeed, historical encounters of Native peoples with Euro-Americans in the United States all too frequently involved military conquest, reservation captivity, assimilation campaigns, resource theft, and numerous other dangers, both mortal and ideological (Jaimes, 1992). These experiences—some of which persist to this day—have collectively established and transformed the psychologies of contemporary tribal peoples, in many instances complicating, compromising, and confounding “mental health” in these communities. For good reason then, many contemporary tribal peoples remain suspicious of the ultimate relevance and utility of conventional psychological interventions proffered by Euro-American mental health professionals (as revealed in the opening quotation of an elder on the first author’s home reservation).
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