Jeffrey J. King
Jeffrey
King, Muscogee Creek, PhD, is a clinical psychologist. At
the time of the following interview, King was dividing his
time between an urban counseling center that he and his
colleagues created called Native American Counseling and
teaching both at the Professional School of Psychology at
the University of Denver and at the University of Colorado
Denver. Today Dr. King is an associate professor in the
department of psychology at Western Washington University
in Bellingham, Washington.
Meeting People Where They Are
Please describe the Native American Counseling.
Several of us
created our agency because there was no mental health
provision that was specific to Native American people in
the Denver Front Range area. In 1992-93, I conducted a
Denver Indian mental health needs survey that showed that
the Indian community wanted Native American health workers
who understand our culture.
What
kinds of services do you and your colleagues provide?
We see couples
and families, as well as adults and children on an
individual level. From time to time we have groups. We had
a group for women who came out of violent relationships.
Another very powerful group was designed to deal with the
traumatic effects of boarding school.
What’s a little bit unique about our agency is that we’re
willing to go to clients’ homes. Historically, in the
dominant service model, in order to be helped you had to go
to the white folks and meet them on their turf. We’re
trying to reverse that process. We do have an office, and
people come to our office, but in those cases where it’s
difficult, we’re open to meeting people where they are.
We also provide full psychological testing, including
cognitive testing and child custody evaluations. Time and
time again culture shows up on these tests as pathology.
We’re able to tease that out and explain that if you
understand how Native Americans think, how family systems
are constructed, and so on, then this can mean something
very different. Because we’re the only agency in the region
that offers this kind of service, we work not only with
Native Americans in Denver, but also with tribes in
Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and South Dakota.
Does
your agency have other unique characteristics and projects?
Yes. We are
committed amongst ourselves to staying healthy. How can you
provide mental health therapy to others if you’re not
staying healthy amongst yourselves? When we first started
the agency, those of us on staff who felt comfortable went
to sweat lodge together to pray for the effectiveness of
our agency in the community. Periodically at our staff
meetings, we’ll have a talking circle and be open with one
another.
We’ve tried to create an agency where we move as one rather
then have a hierarchical structure. Even though the
articles of incorporation for the State require that you
have a director, a treasurer and that sort of thing, for us
it’s very fluid, and it’s only on paper. So once a year or
so, we’ll say, “Who wants to be director this year?”
Our staff ranges in degree of traditionality. Some staff
members are very closely tied to their tribal traditions
and ceremonies. Others of us are still tied to the
community but have our varying beliefs. We support each
other and enjoy being together, not only in the office, but
also in the community.
We try to be sensitive to our clients’ needs and the role
that traditional healers have, even in the urban setting.
If clients have already worked with a healer in the past
and are interested in that, we’ll talk with them about
reconnecting with that person. If other clients are
interested in working with a traditional healer, we have
various people that we can refer them to.
Usually we’ll ask our clients (respectfully, and with their
permission)
what they are
doing at their sweat or what ceremony they’re doing. Or
we’ll ask them what the medicine person said to them. In
general, we try to adapt our therapy to what’s going on in
their more traditional healing.
Culture serves as our foundation. Concepts of self,
relationships and the historical piece form a deep
connection between therapist and client. We see our
psychological or social work training as tools, which
sometimes have to be modified to deal with our particular
culture.
We don’t see ourselves as traditional healers. We clearly
see ourselves as therapists. We know that medicine men and
women deal with stuff way beyond what we’re able to tap
into. We respect that space. We don’t try to put ourselves
in that place. But we will talk with clients about what’s
going on for them spiritually.
How did you get into this work?
It wasn’t until
my second time in college, when I went back to focus on
psychology, that I decided to look at what’s going on in
psychology in relation to Native Americans. When I realized
the narrowness and the ethnocentric focus that has
historically been the case toward Native people, it
motivated me all the more to get in there and try to
present information that was less biased.
I geared my training around cross-cultural psychology, with
Native Americans as the target group. I also wanted to
understand what was going on for other minority ethnic
groups in the U.S. and how healing systems are around the
world. That perspective gives you a context for
understanding healing within your own culture as well as
from tribe to tribe.
The first time I went to the University of Oklahoma, I was
right out of high school. I was an art major. The counter
culture was going on. The notion of dropping out of college
was pretty strong. After two years I was one that did that.
I worked a bunch of odd jobs, like landscaping, janitorial
work, electrical work, and carpentry. Then I realized that
I loved talking to people, and people seemed to enjoying
sitting down and telling me what was going on in their
lives. One day when I was working on a roof in the dead of
winter, freezing, I was thinking of a change of career. I
thought, Why not get paid for doing what you love? That’s
when I went back to school.
So
when you went back, you knew what you wanted to
do.
Yes. I was out
of school for 9 years.
Do you find that some of the things that you had been
doing helped you with your understanding of clients and
their situations?
Oh yes. What
you do typically serves you well in other facets of your
life.
I took about two years to get my undergraduate degree in
psychology. Next I went to Penn State for 5 years. Then I
came to Denver to the University of Colorado Health
Sciences Center [UCHSC] for my internship where my major
rotation was with Denver Indian Health and Family Services.
I was the first person to do the internship. Then I did
research at the National Center for American Indian and
Alaskan Native Mental Health Research [at UCHSC]. One day a
week I continued seeing clients at with Denver Indian
Health and Family Services.
What
was your research focus?g
We looked at
substance abuse among American Indian adolescents and
asked, “What are the risk factors that might contribute to
higher levels of substance abuse? What are the protective
factors that keep adolescents from getting involved?” We
found that culture was strength. For example, on a
reservation of one the Plains tribes, we found that the
adolescents who were tied to the tribe and the traditions
were less likely to use drugs or alcohol and had the
greater sense of well-being.
In a more urban setting, we found that American Indian
adolescents who were bicultural were less likely to
substance abuse and had a greater sense of well being than
those adolescents who didn’t feel that they really belonged
to Indian culture or those adolescents who were trying to
adapt to white culture.
The same issues bore out in some research that I did later
here in Denver. American Indian adults who were assimilated
and those that didn’t feel that they belonged had higher
levels of psychological distress than the traditional or
bicultural folks did.
Your
research certainly points to the importance of being
grounded in one’s culture. What do you teach?
For the past 5
years, I have been teaching multicultural counseling to
graduate students in the Counseling Psychology Department
at the University of Colorado at Denver. I became a
half-time faculty member in the Graduate School of
Professional Psychology at the University of Denver in the
fall of 1999. There, I teach courses in racial identity and
cultural competence. These courses all deal with issues for
Native Americans and other ethnic minorities, as well as
other groups that are discriminated against.
You’re making a very important contribution. Keep up
the good work.
This article
was originally published in the Autumn 2000 issue of
Winds of Change. (The cover
artist is Roy Henry Vickers, Tsimshian and English.)
Update
2007
In 200?, Dr. King and his wife and child moved to Taos, New
Mexico where he worked for two years as a clinical
psychologist at the Taos/Picuris Indian Health Service
Clinic. King enjoyed caring for clients but he missed
teaching, so in 2007 he accepted a position as associate
professor in the department of psychology at Western
Washington University where he is teaching both
undergraduate and graduate students. King is also assistant
director of the Center for Cross-Cultural Research, which
is located in the department.
King says that in the last 20 years mental health
disparities for American Indian and Alaska Native people
have gotten worse rather than better. Funding for mental
health care is inadequate. King is working with several
organizations that are trying to eliminate disparities and
enable communities to develop their own unique strategies
for enhancing the health of their people.
King is president of the board of directors of the
First Nations Behavioral Health
Association. The
association's mission is to provide national leadership
to all groups, institutions, and individuals that plan,
provide and access Native American behavioral health
services.
King says that in 2003 the First Nations Behavioral Health
Association joined together with three other ethnic
associations to form the National Alliance of Multi-Ethnic Behavioral
Health Associations. The
purpose of this association is to share expertise on
behavioral health issues and to have a strong voice with
which to advocate for people of color.