Cultural Connections Matter: Learning from Indigenous Communities to Promote Healing for All Children and Families

Every child, youth, and family deserves to be healthy and supported in their community so that they can thrive. This requires access to resources that meet their needs, as they define them, and resources that are grounded in their cultural values, perspectives, and identities. To accomplish this requires that services are either designed by and/or for the communities they serve, or that they are delivered in a manner that is consistent with the values, customs, and self-identified needs of participants. These resources are not just a nice-to-have, they are key to the healthy development of all children and youth. Moreover, they are particularly critical for Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and other youth and families of color because they experience the impact of trauma from ongoing racism, colonization, and oppression. The research is clear that resources and supports that promote a positive racial and cultural identity are important to mitigating or even protecting against the harmful effects of trauma and can promote health equity more broadly.  

Keeping Cultural Affirmation at the Core 

In CSSP’s work with community-based providers offering culturally responsive services, we have learned how providers respect the identities of children, youth, and families to create trust and promote healing from historical and current traumas. In particular, our conversations with Indigenous community organizations have shown how providers can support families by ensuring that cultural affirmation is not an add-on, but is core to the services they provide. Ultimately, this work is important because, as one provider serving parents in Minnesota shared, “cultural connections matter. They are healing, they are fundamental, and they are critical to identity.”  

Our conversations with Indigenous community-based partners showed how incorporating culture in all aspects of service provision can allow providers to better support the needs of the families they serve. For example, for a legal services provider in Minnesota that serves parents and caregivers facing a child separation, a critical part of their services is not just representing families in court but is also ensuring families can engage in cultural practices that strengthen them throughout the process. Including through having an elder on staff who leads smudging ceremonies before court appearances, the law center helps families in stress to feel supported by their community in a way that is culturally resonant with them. The provider’s office is also located in a building owned by a Tribal Nation, which allows clients to “feel at home. They can feel connected to others in the community.” The legal service provider also works with the child welfare department to leverage flexible funding to support their clients who need to practice important traditional family bonding activities, such as helping a family buy gifts for elders and healers leading traditional practices, for example, a family sweat lodge ceremony.  Through these approaches, the law center can help families build connections to other community resources that can help strengthen the family and support healing. In this example, the cultural affirmation is part and parcel of the supportive legal services the law center offers, which gives parents and caregivers the comfort of knowing that they are being respected and their needs are met, even as they navigate a difficult time for their family. 

Embracing the Learning Process 

Another key component of being culturally responsive is respecting the unique needs of families, as we saw with urban Indigenous providers serving diverse Indigenous families in ways that recognize each Tribe as a unique, sovereign nation with its own cultural identity. For urban Tribal-serving organizations, this respect for diversity is important because they may be serving families with different tribal affiliations. For example, we spoke with an urban provider in Minnesota whose organization serves children, youth, and caregivers who reflect at least 52 different Tribes. In speaking with this provider, she shared their approach to meeting the needs of families with different Tribal traditions and values: “We just learn. We just ask them. We all want to learn and share about our ceremonies.” This provider relies on established relationships with partner organizations and various Tribal nations to ensure  they are collectively serving families appropriately. In Montana, a health services provider whose organization serves 64 federally-recognized Tribes shared that “sometimes it’s hard to practice a cultural protocol for one specific Tribe, but we can all agree, as Tribes, about kinship, reciprocity, spirituality, connectedness, and supporting families’ voice.” By taking the time to identify the values the community shares and what is distinct, the provider can create programs that allow the community “to trust us and [we can] break down the stigma of getting mental health care.” Providing culturally respectful care is a constant learning process, requiring creating spaces for conversations about what diverse members of the community value, designing services that meet those needs, and leveraging flexible resources and deep connections with other providers in the community to  offer truly responsive supports.  

Advancing Solutions to Promote Healing 

We know that cultural connections matter for mental health and wellbeing, and from our work with Indigenous partners, it’s clear that communities already know, through traditional and ongoing innovation, what youth and families need to heal. Understanding the why and the how can shift not only how public systems support Indigenous children, youth, and families but also how all children, youth, and families should be supported. Through our partnerships with Tribal and non-tribal providers and system leaders, we are working to develop and advance solutions that not only increase the availability of services grounded in cultural values, but also increase the understanding of why these supports matter for all families. As we continue with this work, a few things are already clear: 

• Federal policymakers and public systems have a responsibility to support communities in serving children, youth, and families in ways that reflect their needs and cultural values. They can do this by increasing flexible funding at the federal and state levels and by removing administrative barriers that limit the ability of Tribal partners to access funding. For example, working with providers to define measures of success as defined by the community and aligning data reporting. One provider we interviewed shared that across their state, county, and philanthropic funders, they are required to use multiple databases and reporting structures that limit their ability to capture the full impact of their work and expand their services because resources are tied to reporting rather than serving families.  

• There are unique opportunities for community-based organizations to partner to expand how they are collectively able to support families. This can range from significant institutional collaborations to more “everyday” mechanisms of support. For example, a provider we work with shared that their office is located in the Urban Office of White Earth Nation, and another provider with the Department of Indian Works in Minnesota shared that they provide conference room space to another organization that provides baby supplies to families they work with.  

• Eligibility requirements can create unnecessary restrictions that harm families and limit access. One provider we spoke with shared that they serve all Indigenous people—regardless of if they have official Tribal membership because they know how difficult the process can be for obtaining formal membership. Another provider spoke about how they serve all parents through home visiting, not just parents of young children: “all families need support, it doesn’t matter how old the child is.” 

• Community-based providers know what families need because they listen to what families say. The providers we are working with have shared the diverse ways they have of knowing “what works” in their community without engaging in a randomized control trial (RCT). When families ask for extra sessions, when families use the community space outside of their scheduled services because it “feels safe” or “feels like home”, or when they refer others in the community to the services—all of these are meaningful examples of evidence that the providers are serving families in ways that help and promote healing. Policymakers and system leaders must learn from communities what is working and create funding mechanisms that support organizations in continuing to provide these services.