Promoting Quality of Life in the Face of Historical Trauma Among Indigenous Communities: The Protective Roles of Ethnic Identity and Communal Mastery

Purpose: Indigenous populations in Taiwan have experienced generations of devastating colonial oppression, influencing their quality of life (QOL). An increasing number of studies have identified indigenous cultural strengths as significant protective mechanisms that can confront adversity and promote healthy indigenous communities across the world. For instance, Walters and Simoni (2002)’s Indigenist Stress Coping Model (ISCM) has suggested that positive indigenous identity and being a part of a supportive, close-knit group as protective factors can interrupt the negative influence of historical trauma on indigenous health outcomes. Majority studies of Taiwanese indigenous populations focus on pathological outcomes, overlooking important culturally-responsive components for strength-based interventions. There is a need to pay more attention to resilience outcomes for indigenous populations. The study aims to investigate whether ethnic identity and communal mastery (defined as the belief that individuals can overcome stressful circumstances through attachment to group members) as cultural strengths can moderate QOL among Taiwanese indigenous communities when faced with historical trauma.

Methods: The study used a cross-sectional survey which was conducted between 2015 and 2016 among 245 indigenous tribal members (20-83 years) who live in the East Taiwan. QOL was measured by the Taiwan Version of World Health Organization Quality of Life (Yao, Chung, Yu & Wang, 2002), which has been verified as a reliable and valid instrument for use with Taiwanese populations. Historical trauma was measured by the Intergenerational Historical Trauma Adversity Scale, which was designed to measure intergenerational historical traumatic experiences among Taiwanese indigenous communities (Teyra, 2017). Ethnic identity was measured by the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (Roberts et al., 1999). Communal mastery was measured by the Communal Mastery Scale (Hobfoll, 2002). I conducted linear regression models to examine the main effects of historical trauma on QOL, especially investigating whether ethnic identity and communal mastery could moderate the impact of historical trauma on QOL by adding corresponding interaction terms to the models. The data was analyzed utilizing Stata version 14.

Results: The results indicated that more exposure to intergenerational historical traumatic adversity was significantly associated with poorer QOL, after controlling sociodemographic covariates (β=-.61, t=10.89, p<.001). After separately adding each of ethnic identity and communal mastery to the model, I found evidence for statistically significant protective effects. Both ethnic identity and communal mastery also moderated the influence of exposure to historical traumatic adversity on QOL (β=.26, t=3.98, p<.01; β=.35, t=2.99, p<.01, respectively). The full model explained 21% of the variance in QOL(F (7, 245)=7.73, p<.01). The findings revealed that exposure to historical traumatic adversity was negatively associated with good QOL among participants with low levels of ethnic identity and communal mastery, but this association was weak among those with high levels of ethnic identity and communal mastery.

Conclusions and Implications: The results are consistent with ISCM, which suggests that indigenous cultures can buffer the negative impacts of historical trauma on indigenous health. To promote indigenous peoples’ QOL, findings suggest that strength-based community programs may benefit from interventions that improve strong sense of ethnic identity and communal mastery skills.