A New Psychology

Looking at the alternatives to colonial, Western psychology

Posted on October 12, 2020 in Review of the Week

A new psychology based on community, equality, and care of the Earth : an indigenous American perspective

Blume, Arthur W. Praeger, 2020
261p index, 9781440869259 $63.00, 9781440869266

In this important contribution to the literature of both general psychology and indigenous psychology, Blume is careful to emphasize that there is not a totalizing discourse of the “indigenous,” but there are enough commonalities to construct a theory of indigenous psychology rooted in North American experiences, roughly generalizable to other traditions and peoples. Moreover, Dr. Blume successfully advocates for alternatives to colonial, Western psychology, particularly given the contemporary crises of health and social injustice/inequities. While indigenous peoples range from nations of the North American plains to the Inuit of the far North, including also Polynesians, Melanesians, Micronesians, and the Aboriginals of the Pacific, Dr. Blume’s generalizations are broadly applicable, particularly in times when many indigenous peoples are threatened, not only by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic but also by climate change and the emergence of nationalistic leaders who subsume indigenous concerns to other agendas. Dr. Blume’s theory of indigenous psychology clarifies that these peoples not only face vulnerabilities but also have multilayered resilience. While being group oriented and closely linked to the land made colonial encounters particularly traumatic for indigenous cosmologies, ontologies, and epistemologies (almost diametrically opposed to Western individualistic, capitalist discourses), the same constructs also have enabled indigenous peoples to survive, and sometimes begin to thrive, in a postcolonial world.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.
Reviewer: K. Liu, John F Kennedy Memorial Hospital
Subject: Science & Technology – Health Sciences
Choice Issue: Jan 2021

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