V. CONCLUSIONS AND FINDINGS

V. CONCLUSIONS AND FINDINGS

“One must be wise in knowing what to prepare for and equally Wise knowing in being prepared for the unknowable.”

--Yup’ik Quote, Native Voices

“When money is used for external reward for activity the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity – in other words money can deliver short term boosts but the effects wear off – and worse can reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue the project.”

--Daniel Pink, 2011

The seven Alaska Native Women’s projects are succeeding in their efforts to reduce

violence in Native villages and communities, despite the numerous vexing factors that contribute

to the disproportionate level of violence against Native Alaska Women. Humans have a long and

complex history of violence and aggression. Violence has been colonized leading to the present-

focus of Native on Native violence while generally ignoring the rate high rates of interracial

violence against these groups, especially towards Native women. Colonialism and the structures

and processes of settler colonialism (e.g., settler laws, beliefs, values, policies, identity, and

sovereignty) have advanced the goals of settler colonialism while diminishing those of Indigenous

Peoples which has contributed to the present rates of violence towards Native women. The

context of violence is undergirded by human fears, anxiety, and aggression of real and imagined

threats. The types of violence and the factors that predict intimate violence are complex, diverse,

and numerous and require tremendous efforts to address.

Violence is embedded in all societies, classes, and genders, and is much more of a

problem of male behavior. Arguments continue about whether violence is nature or nurture. The

scientific community leans towards the idea that it is more likely in our nature, while studies show

that nurture can be a powerful mediator of violence. And, several studies show that the capacity

for human violence and aggression can be found in our genes, brain, and neurochemistry. This is

not to say that we are not capable of love, compassion, empathy, and trust – we are.

The seven Alaska Native Women’s projects have engaged themselves in challenging work

and environments and demonstrated an impressive commitment to what they do. The narratives

and the statements from the 4-D Appreciative Inquiry analysis provide important evidence that

all of the projects have (1) made progress; (2) have a number of accomplishments; (3) possess a

multitude of positive core attributes and strengths within the individual, organizations, and

communities; and (4) have confronted and successfully dealt with many of the challenges before

them.

It is important to mention that a strategic inquiry to study the progress, accomplishments,

strengths, and the challenges of an organization using an Appreciative Inquiry approach is a

more recent analytical phenomenon in organizational research. For some time, organizational

analyses were based upon “rational” approaches that were aimed at assessing organizational

change, function, efficiency, and effectiveness; this is also true of American Indian and Alaska

Native organizations. Much of the assessment focused on the threats to an organization (as in

what is wrong with the organization) and how the threats could affect change, function,

efficiency, and effectiveness, and how they might be dealt with.

One of the most well-known organizational analytical approaches used to assess the

function of the organization was the “rational model,” which is the precursor to many of the

rational organizational approaches around today. The rational model was created by Fredrick

Taylor (1911) under the paradigm of “scientific management.” Its main goals were improving

economic efficiency and labor productivity. The major focus of the model was on the

organization and not the external people, units, or audience it served. Therefore, not

surprisingly, in the opening sentence of this classic work Taylor states “the principle object of

management should be to secure maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the

maximum prosperity for each employé” (p.1).

The rational model at this time, and to some extent today, focused/focuses on improving

organizational performance by concentrating on what had or was going wrong, failing, lagging,

or underperforming – and then engaging in processes to improve the situation by using

“inducements” or “incentives,” which, according to the findings in motivational research, have

short term benefits but lose effectiveness over the long term (Langelett, 2009).

New models of organizational analysis, such as Appreciative Inquiry, have opened up to

the understanding that rather than inducements and incentives being at the core of the strengths

of the organization, it is the drives, knowledge, creativity, and wisdom of the people in the

organization that provide the key ingredients. For example, author Daniel Pink (2011), in his

bestseller book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” uses four decades of

scientific research on human motivation to demonstrate that high performance and satisfaction

at home, work, and school is based upon three key ideas: (1) Autonomy: that there is a deep

human need to have control and be able to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery: that there is a

need for each of us to learn and create new things and get better at what we do; and (3)

Purpose: that there is a need to do better by ourselves and our world and to be part of

something that is bigger than we are. Each of the Native Alaska women’s projects have at

different times and in different ways, added aspects of autonomy, mastery, and purpose to the

lives of their workers, organizations, and communities.

In sum, the newer models of organizational analysis that focus on what is positive about

an organization and its people, such as Appreciative Inquiry, have ushered in a new era of

evidence that effectively argues for the need to radically shift how organizations operate.

Throughout the Narratives of Strength, Building Capacity, and Community

Empowerment section, the seven projects in this study shared several important examples of how

the staff and the project activities were engaged in understanding their progress,

accomplishments, strengths, and challenges. Much of this was found using the 4-D cycle

Appreciative Inquiry model, which helped to generate the attributes of the positive core of the

staff, organizations, and community. Throughout the interviews staff shared how they were able

to call upon several positive core attributes in order to build capacity, unleash imagination, and

empower the organization and the lives it touched (Brown, 2009). Several of the Thriving

Women’s Initiative-Alaska projects shared their immense gratitude to the 7th Generation Fund

for Indigenous Peoples, Inc., for providing the training, support, and funding that enabled them

to do their work.

A number of key attributes that populate the positive core were identified. As Thomas

(2006) has stated the positive core includes the strengths, talents, capacities, knowledge, creativity,

resilience, wisdom, skills, and resources of the organization and individuals. Brown (2006) further

states that there is an assumption that these characteristics are available and can be called upon

to build capacity, unleash imagination, and empower the organization and the lives it touches. It

is through the positive core of each project and the drawing from that core that the seven Alaska

Native women’s projects were able to able to gauge their efforts to build community capacities

and empowerment.

The key positive core attributes of each project are shared in the following three

diagrams. The diagrams are split up according to a cohort designation: Cohort One: Hoonah

Indian Association, Arctic Winds Healing Winds, and Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center;

Cohort Two: Healing Native Hearts, United Tribes of Bristol Bay, and Emmonak Women’s

Shelter; and Cohort Three: Yup’ik Women’s Coalition.

There is a page number included in each attribute box that serves as a reference to the

page where the attribute is located. To the right each attribute, below the PC, are the

abbreviations of one or more of the positive core themes (PC) that are associated with the

attribute:

Positive Core Attribute Abbreviation

Strengths

STR

Talents

Capacities

Knowledge

Creativity

Resilience

Wisdom

Skills

Resources

TAL

CAP

KNW

CRE

RES

WIS

SKL

RES