The alter-Native psy-ence of Indigenous well-being: Relational expressions of self and expansive attributions of personhood

Fifty years ago, Congressional passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act heralded a new era in U.S. Indian affairs, ostensibly repudiating the long history of federal intrusion, domination, and control of American Indian lives. Since then, self-determination has come to define federal Indian policy, so much so that the term remains in widespread colloquial usage throughout Indian Country. Even as Tribal governments assumed administrative control of their own human services during this time, inequities in the mental health status of Indigenous communities have persisted. In response, American Indian communities have engaged, critiqued, and recast knowledge and expertise in the mental health professions. The result is an “alter-Native psy-ence” of mental health, comprising Indigenous visions of flourishing mental health and holistic well-being. In these enduring views of a good life, Indigenous communities retain esteem for both personal autonomy and capacious relationality. This fusion of regard for exercising agency and freedom alongside regard for fulfilling roles and duties entails a dynamic configuration of selfhood-in-relation to others. Moreover, these others include both human and non-human persons, for whom personhood itself is defined by the capacity to exercise agency, autonomy, and self-determination. In this article, description and illustration of relational Indigenous expressions of self-configuration and expansive Indigenous attributions of personhood illuminate diverse forms of well-being that extend well beyond the culturally myopic orientations of the mental health professions. Recognition of these alter-Native modalities of living by the “psy” disciplines harbors potential for Indigenous “futurity” and “survivance” in robust anticolonial fashion. • American Indians have challenged expert knowledge in the mental health professions • They promote a para-psychiatric discourse described as an “alter-Native psy-ence” • In addition to distress, treatment, and evaluation, well-being is an important domain • Indigenous conceptions of well-being depend on construals of self and personhood • Appreciation of Indigenous ideas of well-being is necessary for future “survivance”