Masters Thesis

Integrating modified talking circles to create culturally relevant frameworks

The traditional Native American talking circle evolved from Indigenous people throughout many tribal regions and is utilized for a variety of reasons, primarily healing one's mind, body, and spirit. The integrated use of a modified talking circle is emerging into many diverse Western systems of education, justice, recovery, counseling, health, and other systems. Many tribal programs are also utilizing Talking circles to treat the tribal people in many areas of recovery, mental health, restorative justice, education, health, intervention, prevention, and rehabilitation programs. The purpose of this project was to explore the feasibility of incorporating modified talking circles as a method of integrating indigenous ways of knowing into Western and Tribal social, justice, education, and health systems. I drew past personal experience from my participation and telling of a traditional Native American talking circle by autoethnography. I conducted a literature review of published articles describing the use of modified talking circles, also called presentation circles, from a variety of settings. Finally, I conducted a participant observation study of a modified talking circle that was organized in a local tribal community. The outcome of this research project provided insight and support for the integrated talking circle within Tribal and Western systems.

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