Land-based activities and family support linked to healthier outcomes for Indigenous youth
A five-wave study found that cultural engagement, family warmth and peer relationships tracked with alcohol use, mental health and physical health during adolescence.
Editorial illustration — not from the study.
Researchers analyzed five waves of data from young people living on or near a Tribal Nation or Reserve in the United States and Canada. The participants were about 11 years old on average at the first survey. The study grouped them according to their cultural engagement, family support and peers, then examined changes in alcohol use, mental-health symptoms and physical health over time.
Four groups emerged. Most participants were prosocial but had low cultural engagement, while smaller groups had high-risk patterns, risk-taking peers with mixed cultural engagement, or prosocial relationships alongside high cultural and family engagement. The last group generally had lower alcohol use and fewer mental-health indicators, although alcohol use and anxiety still rose for some groups as cultural engagement and family support declined over time.
What the study found
The analysis identified four trajectory groups: prosocial youth with low cultural engagement, representing 62% of participants; a high-risk group, 11%; youth with risk-taking peers and mixed cultural engagement, 21%; and prosocial youth with high cultural and family engagement, 5%.
More risk-taking peers were associated with higher alcohol use, more symptoms of depression and anxiety, and lower physical-health ratings. High participation in land-based cultural activities together with strong family warmth and support was associated with lower alcohol use, fewer mental-health symptoms and better physical-health trajectories than in other groups. These patterns were generally stable or remained below those of other groups across adolescence, though the group with the highest cultural engagement also showed increases in alcohol use and anxiety over time. Across the full sample, alcohol use in the past year nearly doubled from the first to the fifth wave, with a slight further increase by the seventh wave; anxiety, depression and physical health were relatively stable overall, with slight declines by the seventh wave.
Why the findings matter
The findings point to land-based cultural engagement, supportive families and prosocial peers as factors that may be useful in prevention efforts for American Indian and First Nation adolescents. They also suggest that supporting these relationships and activities early—before adolescence progresses—could be important, particularly because alcohol use and anxiety increased over time in some groups.
The study used an Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge framework and was developed through a community-based participatory research project involving eight Indigenous communities. This approach centers Indigenous cultural knowledge and community involvement when examining youth wellbeing and considering culturally grounded prevention programs.
Evidence and caveats
This was a longitudinal analysis of an existing community-based dataset, not a randomized test of a land-based or family-support intervention. Researchers used baseline measures of cultural activities, family support and peers to identify groups, then compared their outcomes across five survey waves. The results therefore show associations and trajectories, but do not establish that cultural activities or family support caused the healthier outcomes.
The sample included 735 tribally enrolled young people living on or near communities in the northern Midwest of the United States and Canada, with an average age of 11.09 years at the first wave. The analysis used Waves 1–3, 5 and 7; Waves 4 and 6 were excluded because the measures needed for the group analysis were unavailable. The findings may not apply to Indigenous adolescents in other communities or settings, and the study noted that cultural engagement and family support declined while risk-taking peers increased over time.
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