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Alternative Medicine for the Elderly pp 265–286Cite as

Native American Elder Care

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Abstract

As I wrote this essay, I found myself challenging biases and romantic prejudices in my search for what it was like in the past to be old in Native America. Being Native American, I found myself wanting our culture to be somehow better for the aged than that of our European invaders. We grow up with a variety of apocryphal stories about elders in pre-European times — about how we valued the elderly, even revered and respected them for their wisdom and teaching. My research for this essay revealed changing patterns of age relations even before the European invasion.

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Authors
  1. L. Mehl-Madrona
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Geriatrics, University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami VA, Medical Center (11A), 1201 NW 16th St., 33125, Miami, FL, USA

    E. Paul Cherniack MD

  2. School of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey at Newark University Hospital, University of New Jersey-Newark, 150 Bergen Street, 07103, Newark, NJ, USA

    Neil Cherniack PhD

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Mehl-Madrona, L. (2003). Native American Elder Care. In: Cherniack, E.P., Cherniack, N. (eds) Alternative Medicine for the Elderly. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05185-6_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05185-6_18

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-07913-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-05185-6

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