“I Know She Will be There without Any Questions”: Centering American Indian Youth Perspectives to Expand Concepts of Indigenous Kinship and Social Support In Social Work Research

Background and Purpose:
Social work research plays a critical role in advancing equitable and inclusive understandings of family, health, and community. However, dominant Western frameworks continue to shape research, policy, and practice in ways that may overlook culturally grounded systems of care. In Indigenous cultures, cousins hold a unique position within family networks, bridging family units and contributing to a broader social fabric that extends beyond the nuclear family. These relationships, whose functions are rooted in ancestral understandings of love and kinship, play a crucial role in fostering individual and community resilience. Western research has largely overlooked the significance of cousins as natural supports, and existing health literature is mostly limited to studies using cousins merely as controls for extended family fixed effects in quantitative studies. This study addresses this gap by examining how American Indian (AI) youth understand and experience cousin relationships and how these findings contribute to broader changes in how social support should be conceptualized and measured in Indigenous social work research.

Methods:
In 2022, the Tribal Reservation Adolescent Connections Study (TRACS) conducted a mixed-methods social network study with AI youth (n = 263 survey; n = 16 interviews) across three schools on a Northern Plains reservation. The study included social network surveys (n = 263) and in-depth, semi-structured interviews (n = 16) with 9th and 10th grade AI students. Surveys assessed peer, kin, and community ties, while interviews elicited youths’ reflections on their social networks and the role of these relationships in shaping health and well-being. Qualitative interviews were transcribed and analyzed thematically using an inductive approach to identify how youth define and experience cousin relationships. In this presentation, we present descriptive statistics on the role of cousins in social networks of AI youth. We then share a thematic analysis of interviews, exploring how Indigenous youth relate to and describe their connections with cousins, particularly how these relationships influence their well-being and health.

Findings:
Findings illustrate how cousin relationships are a prominent and highly valued source of support within AI youths’ social networks. Results indicate that cousins are often defined based on shared experiences, such as growing up as neighbors and having close relationships with shared adults, rather than strictly by biological connection. These ‘chosen family’ types of connections are instrumental in promoting health and well-being, challenging the dominant Western model of the nuclear family as the primary source of support, and complicating how family and community support is typically measured in health research. Our research underscores the importance of culturally specific support networks that include extended family and community members.

Conclusion and Implications:
By centering AI youth perspectives, the findings support more culturally responsive approaches to measurement, intervention development, and evaluation. This study demonstrates how social work research can contribute to the common good by expanding whose knowledge counts in defining health and support, strengthening culturally grounded approaches to prevention, and advancing more inclusive and equitable research practices that better reflect the lived realities of Indigenous communities.