Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Indigenous peoples have experienced centuries of colonization contributing to certain deleterious outcomes such as elevated rates of substance abuse (Marshall, Leatherdale & Burkhalter, 2011). The effects of the oppression might be ameliorated through the use of adaptive coping strategies, such as those of seeking instrumental and emotional support that are central to the Stress-Coping model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). However, this model may not be entirely relevant to Indigenous peoples as it fails to consider the role of culture, a protective factor among First Nations youths (Flanagan et al., 2011). Conversely, the "Indigenist" Stress-Coping (Walters, Simoni, & Evans-Campbell, 2002) is based on the role of culture among Indigenous persons. In this study, Western coping strategies and cultural identity are both examined as protective factors against substance use among First Nations youth. Furthermore, as culture has previously been found to influence the coping strategies used by Aboriginal peoples (Corbine, 2011), the degree to which cultural identity and traditional coping strategies influence one another is also be considered. 88 First Nations adolescents from two communities in northern Quebec completed the Brief COPE (Carver, 1997), used to assess coping strategies; the Biculturalism Involvement Questionnaire (BIQ; Szapocznik, Kurtines, & Fernandez, 1980) used to measure affiliation with First Nations and White culture; and the Self-Report Delinquency Scale (SRD; Elliott, Dunford, & Huizinga, 1987), used to assess substance use. A hierachical multiple regression revealed that age, White cultural identity, ethnic behaviors, and behavioral disengagement accounted for 26.5% of the variance in substance use, R2 = .265, F(4,54) = 6.220, p < .001. Identification with ancestral culture was the most significant protective factor against substance use, suggesting that it should be central to interventions aimed at reducing substance use in First Nations youth.