The Healthy Ancestor (Advances in Critical Medical Anthropology) (Volume 2)

About this book

Native Americans researchers increasingly worry are disproportionately victims of epidemics and poor health because they fail to seek medical care are non-compliant patients or lack immunity enjoyed by the mainstream population. Challenging this dominant approach to indigenous health Juliet McMullin shows how it masks more fundamental inequalities that become literally embodied in Native Americans shifting blame from unequal social relations to biology individual behavior and cultural or personal deficiencies. Weaving a complex story of Native Hawaiian health in its historical political and cultural context she shows how traditional practices that integrated relationships of caring for the land the body and the ancestors are being revitalized both on the islands and in the indigenous diaspora. For the fields of medical anthropology public health nursing epidemiology and indigenous studies McMullins important book offers models for more effective and culturally appropriate approaches to building healthy communities.