Indigenous people policing indigenous people: The potential psychological and cultural costs.

Source: (2000) Paper presented at the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association meeting. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, May. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: University of Alberta, School of Native Studies.

Police officers face significant levels of stress in their work. Gould maintains that Native American police officers, particularly those policing their own people on reservations, face additional stress. This is due to fundamental conflicts between European-based concepts of authority, hierarchy, and ruling entity, and Native American concepts of spiritual compact, tribal significance, and other elements of this customary/traditional worldview. Hence, Gould examines the cultural dissonance experienced by Native American police. Specifically, he researches Navajo police and the competition they face between Navajo traditional law (more akin to contemporary restorative justice models) and European-based law imposed on the Navajo people.