Resilience in Action
Resilience in American Indian Communities
How it works:
By practicing the traditional culture, you and your community are showing resilience. Through the decades of American Indian oppression, American Indians have not lost the path that their traditional deities laid out for them. By remembering history and using those experiences to plan for the future we will work towards equity for all American Indians. We would be able to make changes that we dreamed of, we could get the uranium mines cleaned, reduced STIs, increase education, etc.
Who profits:
Everyone and everything will profit! Your family, friends, neighbors, land, everyone.
Benefits/Risks:
There are only benefits to making your community resilient such as love, happiness, laughter, being healthy, being in the present moment, reciprocity, being safe, etc.
Steps to Build a Resilient Community/Atmosphere (Creating Resilient Communities Workbook, 2015)
The following are steps that can be used to begin building a resilient community, if you would like a more in depth step by step break down you can look for the Creating Resilient Communities Workbook.
1. Describing your community
- Place based: Living in the same community, share attachment to community
- Interest based: Sharing same passions, hobbies, identities, faith, jobs, etc.
- Virtual based: Similar to interest based but it’s online through social media.
2. Mapping community assets
- Example: Wellness Mapping (Hardy et al., 2014)
- Inventory of community assets
- Types: People, physical, institutions, organizations, economic
3. Community visioning
- Envisioned by all members of the community
- What is possible
- What is valued
- What is wanted
4. Conducting a community SWOT analysis (Community Toolbox, 2016)
- Identify positive/negative factors in the community using SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats)
5. Setting goals for the community (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2011)
- Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely [SMART] Goals
6. Develop an action plan
- Toolkit for Community-engaged Wellness Mapping (Hardy et al., 2014).