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A Cookie Cutter Approach to Colonization: A Mixed Methods Study of Historical Trauma, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Resilience, Ethnic Identity, and Alcohol Use Among Native Hawaiians Using Doubleweave Phenomenology
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
Native Hawaiians (NHs) experience significant alcohol-related and mental health disparities linked to intergenerational historical trauma (IHT). Little is known about how risk factors (IHT and adverse childhood experiences [ACEs]) and protective factors (ethnic identity and resilience) operate together in NH alcohol use, or how NHs story these experiences.
Objective:
Objective:
To examine how intergenerational historical trauma, adverse childhood experiences, ethnic identity, and resilience relate to alcohol use among Native Hawaiian young adults, and how Native Hawaiians story these experiences.
Methods:
Methods:
A convergent mixed methods design guided by the Historical Trauma Conceptual Model was used. Fifty-three NH adults (18–29 years) completed a survey including the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), the Historical Loss Scale (HLS), the Historical Loss Associated Symptoms Scale (HLAS), a modified ACE questionnaire, the Ethnic Identity Scale (EIS), and a resilience measure. Interviews with 7 NH adults, grounded in Indigenous storytelling (kūkākūkā), were analyzed using doubleweave phenomenology, a decolonizing, cross-Indigenous method created by the first author, a Cherokee scholar. Strands were integrated through triangulation in a joint display.
Results:
Results:
EIS exploration (B=−0.57; P=.04) and resolution (B=−0.46; P=.03) were independently associated with lower AUDIT scores (R²=0.414); HLS, HLAS, ACEs, and resilience were not. Five themes emerged: alcohol was absent from precontact Hawaiʻi, where ʻawa was ceremonial and medicinal; alcohol use became normalized and intergenerationally transmitted within ʻohana (families); alcohol numbs bottled-up emotion; historical trauma is an ongoing, lived present of displacement and solastalgia; and ethnic pride, cultural reconnection, and cycle-breaking function as protection.
Conclusions:
Conclusions:
Active engagement with ethnic identity protected against hazardous alcohol use, and NH moʻolelo located harm's origins in colonization and protection in culture, identity, and ʻohana — supporting culturally grounded, identity-strengthening, ʻāina-based interventions.
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