Native American Womanhood: Examining the Role of Colonization to Legitimize a more Accurate

May 9, 2025
8:30 - 10:30am CST
Location: Virtual via Zoom
Fee: $10 full members; $25 partial members and nonmember
Trainer(s): Pilar Gauthier, LPC
Continuing Education Hours: 2.0

Course Description

Native American women play a pivotal role in unraveling patriarchal influences, which have far-reaching gender implications in their traditional social systems and organized labor. Much of what is understood about Native American women’s life roles is in the context of Western mental health as well as labor statistics and economic indicators, which compare data, such as vocational and economic trajectories, to non-Native American values. Using the presenter’s original research, this discussion situates Native women’s gendered experiences in pre-colonial gender norms and U.S. historical context toward understanding of wellbeing provides inroads into how mental health and psychology understand the intersection of social, economic, and work disparities they face. Additionally, because Native American women lead many life roles, including as leaders, educators, clinical professionals, and mothers and caregivers roles, implications for the family and community systems are provided.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to discuss three major U.S. federal policies that are implicated in colonization
• Participants will understand at least three impacts that Native American women and indigenous communities face due to on-going social factors related to colonization
• To advance the understanding of Indigenous self-determination in their conceptualization of wellness, participants will learn how Native American women’s life roles are shaped by cultural identity, values, and resilience, which set the stage for their vocational identities and allow them to strategize around barriers (e.g., MMIW) toward community wellness and cultural survivance.
• Participants will explore and consider at least two ways to use this information (e.g., implications) in their roles as mental health providers and advocates within clinical settings as well as outreach, policy, and consultation.

About Your Trainer

Pilar Gauthier, LPC

Pilar Gauthier (Menominee/Ho-Chunk) is a PhD candidate in counseling psychology. Her Native American worldview and service to the community are evident in her research approach. She advocates for indigenous ways of knowing and doing as legitimate sources of knowledge and scientific inquiry within academia. Pilar developed an epistemic framework and methodology that centers on Menominee cultural values. In doing so, her research practices respect Menominee tribal sovereignty and linguistic and cultural intellectual property.

Pilar's research aims to improve psychological practice among underrepresented populations, including exploring racial and gendered experiences of native and non-native women across life roles, career readiness among BIPOC students, and decolonization within psychotherapeutic practice, assessment, and education. Her dissertation proposes that the vocational lives of Native American women require an expansion of current Western vocational theories to capture the complex histories and nuanced social contexts these women experience as they engage in work, while taking into consideration the history of racism, sexism, economic structures and exploitation implicated in Western research.

Pilar has a master's degree in mental health counseling and a bachelor's degree with a double major in First Nation studies and psychology. Her academic honors include serving as a Graduate Training Program Fellow (2019-2023) at UW-Madison where she spent four years studying under Dr. Mindi Thompson exploring mental health equity in rural Wisconsin. She is a Theodora Herbuth-Kuby Fellow (2022) for exemplary commitment to scientist-practitioner-advocate roles, an Edward A. Boucher Graduate Honor society Inductee (2023) for academic and personal excellence, and she is an inaugural Phi Beta Kappa graduate inductee for academic honors. Pilar has published works on her research and is in progress of a project with the American psychological association focusing on vocational theory of indigenous peoples in the United States. Pilar's research has been formally reviewed and endorsed by her tribe's legislative body.