Kehli Henry

KEHLI HENRY, then a graduate student at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Massachusetts, received funding in October 2016 to aid research on ‘An American Indian Community’s War on Drugs: Intersections of History, Culture, Policy and Representation,’ supervised by Dr. Heather Howard. This dissertation project focused on using community-based ethnographic research to answer three interrelated questions: 1. Why and how have varied ideologies of drug and alcohol use, and representations of drug and alcohol users, shifted in the American Indian community at the center of my research, and in relation to larger society over time? Specifically, it examined how these shifts may be influenced by political, economic, and social issues within the American Indian community itself, and in the relationships between tribal, federal, state, county, city, and collegiate institutions (including governmental, educational, biomedical and behavioral health institutions). 2. How do varying discussions and representations of drug and alcohol users reflect different ideologies about tribal identity, sovereignty, culture, community, and the relationships between American Indian community members and addiction? In particular, the study explored how representations of drug and alcohol users, especially within the American Indian community, reinforce, reframe, and/or actively resist dominant discourses about the relationships that American Indian people have (or have had) with drugs, alcohol, and addiction. 3. In what ways do community members reinforce, enact, contest or reject hegemonic ideals and rhetoric in their drug and alcohol related discussions and actions? The grantee was especially interested in the extent to which they draw on ideas of culture and cultural difference to contest or align with certain discourses regarding drug and alcohol use, punitive consequences of illicit drug use, and recovery from addiction.