J B Waldram
Biographic Data
| ID | 3510 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J B Waldram |
| GIVEN NAMES | J B |
| FAMILY NAME | Waldram |
| SIGNATURE | WALDRAM J B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Saskatchewan |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8486-3556 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 277 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Contemporary evacuation responses in a Northern Saskatchewan Cree community
In this article, we chronicle the experiences of a northern Cree community in Canada which undergoes an emergency evacuation due to threat by wildfire. Forced to leave their community under short notice as the fire encroached, individuals were triaged for "risk" and removed sequentially to different communities and temporary facilities. The process of evacuation prompts comparison with earlier processes of the forced removal of children to reside…
Does “Susto” Really Exist? Indigenous Knowledge and Fright Disorders Among Q’eqchi’ Maya in Belize
Backing Weakness
Q'eqchi' women's health is the product of inherent, acquired, and induced vulnerabilities that inform an idiom of "weakness" characteristic of women compared to men, reflecting both biological difference and gender-specific demands placed upon them within the context of village life. While women are understood to be uniquely vulnerable to sickness - their "weakness" - they demonstrate great strength and vigor to perform culturally prescribed role…
Ethnostatus Distinctions in the Western Canadian Subarctic
Subarctic ethnologists have rarely considered the implications of legal Indian and treaty status in their examinations of inter-ethnic and interpersonal relations. Utilizing the concept of ethnostatus, the author argues that Native identity must be seen as the product of the interplay between both cultural and legal/treaty status factors. Ethnostatus identities present themselves differently in different social, economic and political contexts. I…
Moral Habilitation and the New Normal
Diagnostic Emplotment in Q'eqchi' Maya Medicine
Medical diagnosis is a process of illness discrimination, categorization, and identification on the basis of careful observation and is central in biomedicine and many traditional medical systems around the world. Through a detailed analysis of several illness episodes and healer interviews among Maya communities in southern Belize, we observe that the diagnostic processes of traditional Q'eqchi' healers reflect patterns of narrative 'emplotment'…
Asking for a Disaster
This article explores the 2011 emergency evacuation experiences of members of the Hatchet Lake Denesuline First Nation in northern Saskatchewan, Canada due to a rapidly encroaching forest fire. The mandatory evacuation exposed a standard protocol of risk triage to determine who was “at risk” that emphasized the immediate threat of smoke and fire and focused primarily on individuals with health and disability issues. However, the backbone of Dene …
The role of sensorial processes in Q'eqchi' Maya healing
Theory and research on the healing practices of Indigenous communities around the globe have often been influenced by models of "symbolic healing" that privilege the way patients consciously interpret or derive meaning from a healing encounter. In our work with a group of Q'eqchi' Maya healers in southern Belize, these aspects of "symbolic healing" are not always present. Such empirical observations force us to reach beyond models of symbolic hea…
Narrative Structures of Maya Mental Disorders
Latent and manifest empiricism in Q'eqchi' Maya healing
I Don't Know the Words He Uses
Traditional or indigenous healing is often assumed to involve rich forms of dialogical and symbolic communication between healer and patient that serve to explain its salience and efficacy. An ethnographic study of Q'eqchi Maya healing in Belize suggests, however, that communication in some forms of indigenous healing may also be minimal and peripheral to treatment and more akin to that of biomedicine than so-called traditional medicine. While co…
Healing history? Aboriginal healing, historical trauma, and personal responsibility
What can an exploration of contemporary Aboriginal healing programs such as those offered in Canadian prisons and urban clinics tell us about the importance of history in understanding social and psychological pathology, and more significantly the salience of the concept of "historical trauma"? The form of Aboriginal "healing" that has emerged in recent decades to become dominant in many parts of the country is itself a reflection of historical p…
Doing Resilience with “Half a Brain
Transformative and Restorative Processes
Studies of the efficacy of 'traditional' Indigenous healing often fail to consider the epistemologies that underlay specific healing traditions, especially intrinsic notions of efficacy. In this article, I critically engage the concept of efficacy by identifying two somewhat different approaches to the issue of outcome. In 'transformative' healing processes, healing is conceptualized as a journey in which the outcome goal is a transformed individ…
Moral Agency, Cognitive Distortion, and Narrative Strategy in the Rehabilitation of Sexual Offenders
Employing a framework at the intersection of psychological anthropology and narrative theory, I provide a critique of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) approaches to sexual offender rehabilitation. I demonstrate that what forensic psychologists refer to as a "cognitive distortion" or "thinking error" is often embedded within a broader narrative, and that these narratives reveal the existence of identifiable strategies designed to communicate somet…
“It's Just You and Satan, Hanging Out at a Pre‐School
Notions of “evil” are a feature of everyday discourse in civil society. Sexual offenders, individuals often labeled as “evil,” are well aware of public images of themselves and their crimes. This article examines public discourses of “evil” as they pertain to sexual offenders, and the views of sexual offenders themselves on what this means to them. The ethnographic research was undertaken in a prison unit designed for the treatment of sexual offe…
Is there a future for “Culture” in acculturation research? An anthropologist's perspective
Challenges of Prison Ethnography
The Q'eqchi Healer's Association of Belize
The Narrative Challenge to Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Sexual Offenders
Narrative and the construction of `truth' in a prison-based treatment program for sexual offenders
This article examines the conflict that ensues over the meaning of `truth' in a treatment program for imprisoned sexual offenders. Based on ethnographic research in a prison hospital, extensive interview and observational data are employed to demonstrate the pervasiveness of truth discourse in both treatment and everyday living on the unit. Through the application of a narrative analytic framework, it is argued that the inherent incompatibility b…
Everybody Has a Story
In this article the author addresses two basic questions found at the intersection of ethics and qualitative research methodology: Why are some people reluctant to share their stories? and Are there some people whose stories ought not to be heard? Focusing on imprisoned sexual offenders, the author argues that the establishment of trust in the research relationship is essential to creating safe places for people living with "problem experiences" …
The View from the Hogan
Alexander Leighton's seminal work has clearly demonstrated how ethnographic experience provides the rich cultural context in which epidemiological data are best interpreted. This article reviews recent trends in cultural epidemiology, and especially the emergence of the EMIC (Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue) as a quantitatively oriented tool designed to assess culture. It is suggested that such efforts do not reflect more recent trends in c…
Disciplined Hearts
Maya Bonesetters
Medical anthropology has a long history of exoticizing Indigenous forms of healing through ethnographic research. This has typically taken the form of a focus on shamanism, myth, ritual, and symbol
The Efficacy of Traditional Medicine
The efficacy of traditional medicine is an issue that continues to vex medical anthropology. This article critically examines how the efficacy of traditional medicine has been conceived, operationalized, and studied and argues that a consensus remains elusive. Efficacy must be seen as fluid and shifting, the product of a negotiated, but not necessarily shared, understanding by those involved in the sickness episode, including physicians/healers, …
Indians and Anthropologists
Thomas Biolsi and Larry J. Zimmerman (eds.), Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria, Jr. and the Critique of Anthropology, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997, x + 226 pages, $45.00 (cloth), $19.95 (paper).The legacy of Vine Deloria, Jr.'s Custer Died for Your Sins continues to plague anthropology in complex and amusing ways. A single chapter in his 1969 book, devoted to Anthropologists and Other Friends, presented a satirical, biting an…
Transformative and Restorative Processes
Studies of the efficacy of 'traditional' Indigenous healing often fail to consider the epistemologies that underlay specific healing traditions, especially intrinsic notions of efficacy. In this article, I critically engage the concept of efficacy by identifying two somewhat different approaches to the issue of outcome. In 'transformative' healing processes, healing is conceptualized as a journey in which the outcome goal is a transformed individ…
Challenges of Prison Ethnography
Anthropology, Public Policy and Native Peoples in Canada
Since the 1950s the federal government has mounted a series of initiatives to address the social, economic, and political marginality of Canadian natives. These initiatives have had a fundamental and often negative impact on native communities, often as a result of the intense resistance they have generated. Dealing with these developments has gradually altered the character of anthropologists' work. Professional anthropologists are no longer con…
Moral Agency, Cognitive Distortion, and Narrative Strategy in the Rehabilitation of Sexual Offenders
Employing a framework at the intersection of psychological anthropology and narrative theory, I provide a critique of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) approaches to sexual offender rehabilitation. I demonstrate that what forensic psychologists refer to as a "cognitive distortion" or "thinking error" is often embedded within a broader narrative, and that these narratives reveal the existence of identifiable strategies designed to communicate somet…
Healing history? Aboriginal healing, historical trauma, and personal responsibility
What can an exploration of contemporary Aboriginal healing programs such as those offered in Canadian prisons and urban clinics tell us about the importance of history in understanding social and psychological pathology, and more significantly the salience of the concept of "historical trauma"? The form of Aboriginal "healing" that has emerged in recent decades to become dominant in many parts of the country is itself a reflection of historical p…
Is there a future for “Culture” in acculturation research? An anthropologist's perspective
Narrative and the construction of `truth' in a prison-based treatment program for sexual offenders
This article examines the conflict that ensues over the meaning of `truth' in a treatment program for imprisoned sexual offenders. Based on ethnographic research in a prison hospital, extensive interview and observational data are employed to demonstrate the pervasiveness of truth discourse in both treatment and everyday living on the unit. Through the application of a narrative analytic framework, it is argued that the inherent incompatibility b…
Everybody Has a Story
In this article the author addresses two basic questions found at the intersection of ethics and qualitative research methodology: Why are some people reluctant to share their stories? and Are there some people whose stories ought not to be heard? Focusing on imprisoned sexual offenders, the author argues that the establishment of trust in the research relationship is essential to creating safe places for people living with "problem experiences" …
Aboriginal spirituality
Aboriginal Health in Canada
Anthropology, Public Policy, and Native Peoples in Canada
Access to traditional medicine in a Western Canadian city
This paper examines the question of access to traditional Indian medical systems in the western Canadian city of Saskatoon. The data demonstrate that many Natives desire such access, and do not see difficulties in having Indian healers available in Western-style biomedical clinics. A variety of language variables proved to be the best predictors of access questions, indicating that those with the greatest cultural adherence were most likely to wa…
I Don't Know the Words He Uses
Traditional or indigenous healing is often assumed to involve rich forms of dialogical and symbolic communication between healer and patient that serve to explain its salience and efficacy. An ethnographic study of Q'eqchi Maya healing in Belize suggests, however, that communication in some forms of indigenous healing may also be minimal and peripheral to treatment and more akin to that of biomedicine than so-called traditional medicine. While co…
Narrative Structures of Maya Mental Disorders
The role of sensorial processes in Q'eqchi' Maya healing
Theory and research on the healing practices of Indigenous communities around the globe have often been influenced by models of "symbolic healing" that privilege the way patients consciously interpret or derive meaning from a healing encounter. In our work with a group of Q'eqchi' Maya healers in southern Belize, these aspects of "symbolic healing" are not always present. Such empirical observations force us to reach beyond models of symbolic hea…
Latent and manifest empiricism in Q'eqchi' Maya healing
Physician utilization and urban native people in Saskatoon, Canada
Diagnostic Emplotment in Q'eqchi' Maya Medicine
Medical diagnosis is a process of illness discrimination, categorization, and identification on the basis of careful observation and is central in biomedicine and many traditional medical systems around the world. Through a detailed analysis of several illness episodes and healer interviews among Maya communities in southern Belize, we observe that the diagnostic processes of traditional Q'eqchi' healers reflect patterns of narrative 'emplotment'…
The View from the Hogan
Alexander Leighton's seminal work has clearly demonstrated how ethnographic experience provides the rich cultural context in which epidemiological data are best interpreted. This article reviews recent trends in cultural epidemiology, and especially the emergence of the EMIC (Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue) as a quantitatively oriented tool designed to assess culture. It is suggested that such efforts do not reflect more recent trends in c…
The Q'eqchi Healer's Association of Belize
Ethnostatus Distinctions in the Western Canadian Subarctic
Subarctic ethnologists have rarely considered the implications of legal Indian and treaty status in their examinations of inter-ethnic and interpersonal relations. Utilizing the concept of ethnostatus, the author argues that Native identity must be seen as the product of the interplay between both cultural and legal/treaty status factors. Ethnostatus identities present themselves differently in different social, economic and political contexts. I…
The Way of the Pipe
As Long as the Rivers Run
Journal Article As Long as the Rivers Run: Hydroelectric Development and Native Communities in Western Canada. By James B. Waldram. (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1988. xviii + 253 pp. $24.95.) Get access Dwight L. Smith Dwight L. Smith Miami University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 76, Issue 3, December 1989, Page 991, https://doi.org/10.2307/2936545 Publish…
Hydroelectric Development and Dietary Delocalization in Northern Manitoba, Canada 1
The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of dietary change which the Native people of Northern Manitoba, Canada, have experienced as a result of the construction of a hydro-electric project. The paper describes the inter-relationship between changes in the commercial and domestic sectors of the economy, the rapid increase in social assistance payments, a process of sedentation and urbanization, and the apparent decrease in the utiliza…
Applied Anthropology
Relocation, consolidation, and settlement pattern in the Canadian subarctic
And After
As Long as the Rivers Run
Journal Article As Long as the Rivers Run: Hydroelectric Development and Native Communities in Western Canada. By James B. Waldram. (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1988. xviii + 253 pp. $24.95.) Get access Dwight L. Smith Dwight L. Smith Miami University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 76, Issue 3, December 1989, Page 991, https://doi.org/10.2307/2936545 Publish…
Physician utilization and urban native people in Saskatoon, Canada
As Long as the Rivers Run
Journal Article As Long as the Rivers Run: Hydroelectric Development and Native Communities in Western Canada Get access As Long as the Rivers Run: Hydroelectric Development and Native Communities in Western Canada. By Waldram James B.. (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1988. xviii + 253 pp. Maps, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95.) Daniel McCool Daniel McCool University of Utah Search for other works by this author on: Oxford…
Access to traditional medicine in a Western Canadian city
This paper examines the question of access to traditional Indian medical systems in the western Canadian city of Saskatoon. The data demonstrate that many Natives desire such access, and do not see difficulties in having Indian healers available in Western-style biomedical clinics. A variety of language variables proved to be the best predictors of access questions, indicating that those with the greatest cultural adherence were most likely to wa…
Native Health Research in Canada. Native Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 1
The Red Earth Crees, 1860-1960
Health Care in Saskatoon's Inner City
The Institute of Urban Studies is an independent research arm of the University of Winnipeg.Since 1969, the IUS has been both an academic and an applied research centre, committed to examining urban development issues in a broad, non-partisan manner.The Institute examines inner city, environmental, Aboriginal and community development issues.In addition to its ongoing involvement in research, IUS brings in visiting scholars, hosts workshops, semi…
As Long as the Rivers Run
Aboriginal spirituality
Anthropology, Public Policy, and Native Peoples in Canada
Anthropology, Public Policy and Native Peoples in Canada
Since the 1950s the federal government has mounted a series of initiatives to address the social, economic, and political marginality of Canadian natives. These initiatives have had a fundamental and often negative impact on native communities, often as a result of the intense resistance they have generated. Dealing with these developments has gradually altered the character of anthropologists' work. Professional anthropologists are no longer con…
Tangled Webs of History
When British Columbia entered Confederation in 1871, First Nations people (referred to then and in Newell's book as Indians) constituted a majority, yet were not consulted in negotiating terms of union. Nowhere in process of confederation were institutions, governments and economies of First Nations given serious consideration as founding principles of new Dominion. The Fathers of Confederation thought that, with implementation of a paternalistic…
Group Therapy and the Forensic Treatment of Aboriginal Offenders in Canada
In recent years, the use of group therapy approaches with Aboriginal or Native Canadians/American Indians has become widely accepted. However, many advocates of this approach rarely consider the implications of group therapy for culturally heterogeneous groups, such as when non-Aboriginal peoples are involved or when there are Aboriginal peoples from different cultures and/or with different degrees of orientation to Euro-Canadian culture. This ar…
Aboriginal Health in Canada
Aboriginal Health in Canada
Indians and Anthropologists
Thomas Biolsi and Larry J. Zimmerman (eds.), Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria, Jr. and the Critique of Anthropology, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997, x + 226 pages, $45.00 (cloth), $19.95 (paper).The legacy of Vine Deloria, Jr.'s Custer Died for Your Sins continues to plague anthropology in complex and amusing ways. A single chapter in his 1969 book, devoted to Anthropologists and Other Friends, presented a satirical, biting an…
Anthropology in Prison
Research with Aboriginal (Native American) prison inmates presents complex methodological and ethical challenges. This article examines a variety of these, including issues of informed consent, accountability, and the need to balance the perceived needs and goals of the inmates with those of correctional officials. Prison inmates in general are characterized by their official lack of power, personal autonomy and freedom. Anthropological research …
The Way of the Pipe
Disciplined Hearts
The Efficacy of Traditional Medicine
The efficacy of traditional medicine is an issue that continues to vex medical anthropology. This article critically examines how the efficacy of traditional medicine has been conceived, operationalized, and studied and argues that a consensus remains elusive. Efficacy must be seen as fluid and shifting, the product of a negotiated, but not necessarily shared, understanding by those involved in the sickness episode, including physicians/healers, …
The View from the Hogan
Alexander Leighton's seminal work has clearly demonstrated how ethnographic experience provides the rich cultural context in which epidemiological data are best interpreted. This article reviews recent trends in cultural epidemiology, and especially the emergence of the EMIC (Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue) as a quantitatively oriented tool designed to assess culture. It is suggested that such efforts do not reflect more recent trends in c…
Sociology (33 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights (19 works) · Anthropology (18 works) · Geography (17 works) · History (14 works) · Medicine (14 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Criminology (12 works)