Overview

Native Americans, researchers increasingly worry, are disproportionately victims of epidemics and poor health because they “fail” to seek medical care, are “non-compliant” patients, or “lack immunity” enjoyed by the “mainstream” population. Challenging this dominant approach to indigenous health, Juliet McMullin shows how it masks more fundamental inequalities that become literally embodied in Native Americans, shifting blame from unequal social relations to biology, individual behavior, and cultural or personal deficiencies. Weaving a complex story of Native Hawai’ian health in its historical, political, and cultural context, she shows how traditional practices that integrated relationships of caring for the land, the body, and the ancestors are being revitalized both on the islands and in the indigenous diaspora. For the fields of medical anthropology, public health, nursing, epidemiology, and indigenous studies, McMullin’s important book offers models for more effective and culturally appropriate approaches to building healthy communities.

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9781598744996

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Reviews

The Healthy Ancestor is an exciting new contribution to Pacific studies and critical medical anthropology. This impressively detailed study reveals the vital connections between Hawaiian concepts of 'health' and cultural identity. Taking the reader on a journey into Hawaiian history, then to contemporary Hawai'i and the 'off-island' population in California, McMullin convincingly demonstrates the political and economic implications of health inequalities and the need to recontextualise concepts of health within cultural knowledge and Hawaiian identity. <br><br>- Helen Lee, LaTrobe University, Australia, and author of Tongans Overseas: Between Two Shores

Author Information

Juliet Marie McMullin is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California Riverside.

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