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The Framework of Historical Oppression, Resilience, & Transcendence (FHORT)

The FHORT was developed with Indigenous communities to understand how contextually and culturally relevant risk and protective factors across societal, community, cultural, family, relational, and individual levels interact to explain, illuminate, and predict wellness or well-being across mental, physical, relational, spiritual, and emotional realms. Developed with a decade of research, the FHORT characterizes well-being (harmony across physical, social, psychological, and spiritual domains) as balance across interrelated ecological risk and protective factors . According to this framework, oppression takes the form of socio-structural forms of dehumanization that impose restrictive roles onto those who are oppressed (Burnette & Figley, 2017). Historical oppression is societal-level risk factor (Burnette & Figley, 2017), defined as “the chronic, pervasive, and intergenerational experiences of oppression that, over time, may be normalized, imposed, and internalized into the daily lives of many Indigenous people” (p. 38). Although Indigenous people resist, are resilient, and even transcend oppression, the structural factors that perpetuate gender inequity cannot be ignored (Burnette &Figley, 2017). Check out  research related to the FHORT!

Figure 2.Outcomes Related the Wellness P

The Framework of Historical Oppression, Resilience, and Transcendence (FHORT)

Burnette. C. E. & Figley, C. R. (2017). Historical oppression, resilience, and transcendence: Can a holistic framework help explain violence experienced by Indigenous peoples? Social Work 62(1), 37-44. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/sww065

The Historical Oppression Scale

McKinley, C. E., Boel-Studt, S., Renner, L. M., Figley, C. R., Billiot, S., & Theall, K. (2020). The Historical Oppression Scale: Preliminary conceptualization and measurement of historical oppression among Indigenous Peoples of the United States. Transcultural Psychiatry 57(2), 288-303. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461520909605 PMC7811277

The Family Resilience Inventory

Burnette, C. E., Boel-Studt, S., Renner, L. M., Figley, C. R., Theall, K. P., *Miller Scarnato, J. & Billiot, S. (2020). The Family Resilience Inventory: A culturally grounded measure of intergenerational family protective factors. Family Process, 59(2), 695-708. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12423. PMC6716378

Depressive Symptoms and 

Loss of Loved Ones

McKinley, C. E., Miller Scarnato, J. & Sanders, S. (2022). Why are so many Indigenous Peoples dying and no one is paying attention? Depressive symptoms and “loss of loved ones” as a result and driver of health disparities. Omega—Journal of Death and Dying, 88 (1), 88-113. https://doi.org/10.1177/0030222820939391. PMC7853079 (published online in 2022)

Depression and the FHORT

Burnette, C. E., Renner, L. M., & Figley, C. R. (2019). The Framework of Historical Oppression, Resilience, and Transcendence to understand disparities in depression among Indigenous Peoples. British Journal of Social Work, 49(4), 943-962. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcz041. PMC6615430

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