Making space for Native perspectives on health and wellness 

Advances in research and scholarship rarely happen in a vacuum. Each discovery and point of discourse builds on what came before it and the contributions of a scholar’s contemporaries. There’s a kind of collaborative nature to it and a sense of working toward a shared goal, said Dr. William Hartmann, even when you’re not operating as part of a team. 

But when you can get a bunch of leading experts in a field in a room together, he added, that is truly where the magic happens. 

Hartmann, an associate professor in the University of Washington Bothell’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, researches the intersections of psychology, mental health, and American Indian and Indigenous studies. Working in community with fellow researchers and the people who are impacted by his research is the driving force behind many of his projects. 

In his latest project, Hartmann convened experts in the field of American Indian mental health for a two-day writing retreat on the UW Bothell campus centered around the topic: “Indigenous Self-Determination in Mental Health.” 

Community relationships 

Hartmann first became interested in American Indian studies as an undergraduate. 

“It was a way for me to reflect on and interrogate what it means to be American,” he said. “As a psychology major, I was really interested in the big questions, like what it means to be human and how to think about health and wellness.” 

Alongside his psychology course load, he took classes in anthropology, religion and history to further explore these topics. His passion and experience for the subject deepened in his doctoral program at the University of Michigan under the mentorship of Dr. Joseph Gone, a leading global expert in the field and a member of the Aaniiih-Gros Ventre tribal nation of Montana. 

For his first independent research project, Hartmann drew upon his relationships with members of a Great Plains reservation community to develop an interview study about historical trauma. As he continued to develop as a researcher, the community relationships he built further pulled him along this path.

“The collaborations I’ve had have really propelled me along this path,” he said. “Now, I can’t imagine doing anything different because I’ve invested and grown so much as a scholar and a person through all these collaborative projects.”  

As a clinical and community psychologist and researcher, Hartmann works with Indigenous communities to learn what their health priorities are and where those priorities fit or don’t fit within established professional frameworks for mental health. “My career has largely been about trying to make space for Native perspectives on health and wellness and to better understand how Native mental health experiences, concerns and goals square with conventional understandings of and approaches to mental health,” he said.

A meeting of the minds 

At UW Bothell, Hartmann has continued to explore ways of working in community with other academic and Indigenous community scholars. In 2019, he hosted a campus event on “Creating Survivance: Art and Indigenous Wellness,” which included several panel discussions with Indigenous scholars and contemporary Lakota artists, as well as a contemporary Lakota art exhibition on the UW Bothell campus. 

“Because I’m trained as a clinical psychologist, that project really took me out of my comfort zone in the clinic and pushed me to think more broadly about community health and wellness practices for mental health,” he said. “It was a really helpful stepping stone to think about a broader array of creative community practices, including art, that can be integral to tribe’s self-determined understandings, strategies, and goals for mental health.”  

He then connected with Dr. Rachel Wilbur, a research assistant professor at Washington State University, who had also written on the topic of survivance — meaning the blending of survival and resistance as it relates to Indigenous identities. Together, they identified self-determination as an area of study and discussion they wanted to explore as a collective with other scholars. 

“We were interested in bringing together some of the most brilliant minds who think and write about Indigenous self-determination in the Native mental health space,” Hartmann said. “We wanted to clarify the landscape of this scholarship and how people think and write about self-determination. We figured the best way to do that would be a writing retreat where we could talk, in-depth, with some of the leading thinkers in this area from across the continent.”  

With funding support from UW Bothell’s Scholarship, Research and Creative Practice grant program, Hartmann and Wilbur organized a two-day retreat. 

Work as a collective 

The team invited experts from both the U.S. and Canada to submit an abstract for a proposed paper on Indigenous self-determination in mental health to be presented and workshopped for feedback during the retreat. Nearly a dozen people attended. 

“The primary goal was to learn from each other and to further develop our thinking around this issue, because there isn’t robust literature in this area,” Hartmann said. “We wanted to push each other’s thinking and it was clear that everybody felt there’s a lot more to be said on self-determination and ways to make this work more beneficial for Native community partners and research audiences.”

The proposed papers included a mix of theoretical and applied articles, as well as institutional changemaking research. Some of the topics included: “A land-based healing initiative,” “A narrative shift to strengths-based research and intervention as prevention,” and “Unpacking the ‘self’ in Indigenous self-determination, a critique of selfhood as represented in American psychology and the health psy-ences.” 

“It was a good mix of early- and late-stage career folks,” Hartmann said. “The experienced veterans had such helpful feedback and perspectives. It was so rewarding, not just for me as a co-facilitator but as a participant workshopping my own papers. I received incredible feedback. 

“It was everything we hoped it would be, and it couldn’t have gone any better.” 

And, the impact and engagement of the group’s collaboration didn’t end with the retreat, he said. The participants have continued working on their papers and sharing them for feedback. Hartmann and Wilbur are also collecting all the articles that came out of the retreat for a proposed special issue in “Social Science and Medicine- Mental Health,” a high-impact interdisciplinary mental health journal.

Valuable insights for researchers 

Hartmann’s contributions to the issue will include an introduction and an overview of existing Indigenous self-determination in mental health and wellness research in the U.S. and Canada, co-authored by Wilbur. 

Also on the list to be included is a paper he worked on in collaboration with several students and Dr. Sara Eccleston, assistant professor in UW Tacoma’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, titled, “A qualitative analysis of Indigenous misrepresentations in mental health research writing.” 

“One of the best takeaways, for me, was that I should always think through things in good company because it makes for a richer analysis and better experience,” he said. 

He said he hopes the special issue and the diverse range of papers it contains will provide valuable insights for other researchers and mental health professionals, as well as Native American community leaders and policy makers. 

“That was probably one of the most intellectually rewarding experiences I’ve had,” Hartmann said. “I feel like even the senior scholars walked away feeling like they learned a lot. It was such an important, impactful experience, and I’m so grateful to the SRCP grant program. 

“This special issue is a concentrated form of everything that came out of it, and I think it’ll continue to have an impact far beyond this experience.”