About

Joseph P. Gone is a Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Anthropology) and in the Faculty of Medicine (Global Health and Social Medicine) at Harvard University, where he also serves as the Faculty Director of the Harvard University Native American Program. He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1992 and his doctorate in clinical-community psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001. During his graduate training, he was the Charles A. Eastman dissertation fellow at Dartmouth College and completed his psychology internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School. After a brief faculty appointment at the University of Chicago, he served on the faculty at the University of Michigan for sixteen years in the Department of Psychology (Clinical Science Area) and the Department of American Culture (Native American Studies). An enrolled member of the Aaniiih-Gros Ventre tribal Nation of Montana, Gone's interdisciplinary scholarship examines the intersection of culture, coloniality, and well-being in Indigenous communities through collaborative research partnerships in both reservation and urban American Indian settings. He has published over 120 scientific articles exploring the cultural psychology of self, identity, personhood, and social relations with respect to Indigenous community mental health, including cross-cultural comparisons of therapeutic interventions such as psychotherapy and traditional healing. Gone is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and seven divisions of the American Psychological Association, has delivered more than 250 invited presentations, and has been recognized as a Noted Scholar by the University of British Columbia and as a Distinguished Visitor by the University of Alberta. He has served on editorial boards of multiple scientific journals and has been involved in leadership roles including President of the Society of Indian Psychologists and board member of the First Nations Behavioral Health Association. In 2021, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. A peacetime veteran of the U.S. Army and former West Point cadet, Gone lives in Cambridge, MA with his partner and their three children.

Research topics

• Psychiatry
• Sociology
• Emergency medicine
• Medicine
• Pediatrics
• Social psychology
• Engineering ethics
• Environmental health
• Ecology
• Demography
• Environmental ethics
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Indigenous research sovereignty within academia: Challenges and opportunities

  SSM - Mental Health · 2026-04-24

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Systems of survivance: Reimagining indigenous suicide through the lens of culturo-behavior systems science.

  American Psychologist · 2026-04-23

  articleSenior author

  Indigenous suicide prevention continues to be dominated by individual-focused interventions that neglect historical, cultural, and structural contexts. This article reviews culturo-behavior systems science (CBSS) as a complementary analytic approach that extends the transactional-ecological model proposed by Alcántara and Gone (2007). CBSS concepts, including macrocontingency, metacontingency, elaborated metacontingency, culturo-behavioral hypercycle, and matrix analysis, are introduced and applied to Indigenous life-promotion initiatives. Using illustrative examples, we show how CBSS can clarify multilevel contingencies, feedback systems, and systemic selectors that shape the organization and sustainability of life-promoting practices. CBSS aligns with Indigenous relational worldviews and offers analytic tools for examining culturally grounded, community-led approaches to life promotion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Biosocial Implications of Indigenous Trauma

  American Journal of Psychiatry · 2026-03-11

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The alter-Native psy-ence of Indigenous well-being: Relational expressions of self and expansive attributions of personhood

  SSM - Mental Health · 2026-01-26

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Fifty years ago, Congressional passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act heralded a new era in U.S. Indian affairs, ostensibly repudiating the long history of federal intrusion, domination, and control of American Indian lives. Since then, self-determination has come to define federal Indian policy, so much so that the term remains in widespread colloquial usage throughout Indian Country. Even as Tribal governments assumed administrative control of their own human services during this time, inequities in the mental health status of Indigenous communities have persisted. In response, American Indian communities have engaged, critiqued, and recast knowledge and expertise in the mental health professions. The result is an “alter-Native psy-ence” of mental health, comprising Indigenous visions of flourishing mental health and holistic well-being. In these enduring views of a good life, Indigenous communities retain esteem for both personal autonomy and capacious relationality. This fusion of regard for exercising agency and freedom alongside regard for fulfilling roles and duties entails a dynamic configuration of selfhood-in-relation to others. Moreover, these others include both human and non-human persons, for whom personhood itself is defined by the capacity to exercise agency, autonomy, and self-determination. In this article, description and illustration of relational Indigenous expressions of self-configuration and expansive Indigenous attributions of personhood illuminate diverse forms of well-being that extend well beyond the culturally myopic orientations of the mental health professions. Recognition of these alter-Native modalities of living by the “psy” disciplines harbors potential for Indigenous “futurity” and “survivance” in robust anticolonial fashion. • American Indians have challenged expert knowledge in the mental health professions • They promote a para-psychiatric discourse described as an “alter-Native psy-ence” • In addition to distress, treatment, and evaluation, well-being is an important domain • Indigenous conceptions of well-being depend on construals of self and personhood • Appreciation of Indigenous ideas of well-being is necessary for future “survivance”

  PublisherDOI

• Protective and risk factors of suicide in Native American youth: cross-sectional findings from a mixed-methods study

  The Lancet Regional Health - Americas · 2025-09-24

  articleOpen access

  Background: Native American (American Indian/Alaska Native) youth have the highest rates of suicide and suicide clusters in the United States, and appropriate responses are lacking. This study examined protective and risk factors for suicide in a remote Northern Plains reservation with a recent cluster. Methods: A mixed-methods study was conducted on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, Montana, in 2022 using a community-engaged approach. Quantitative results from the 251-item questionnaire are presented, which were derived from a culturally adapted socio-ecological model. Aaniiih and Nakoda youth 14-24 years of age, living on/near Fort Belknap were recruited. Findings: In total, 197 youth completed the questionnaire; average age was 16.6 years (SD = 2.60). One hundred (51%) youth were female and 90 (46%) male; 6.1% of data points were missing. Positive family relationships, communal mastery, benevolent childhood experiences, and emotional intelligence were protective, decreasing odds of suicide ideation. Childhood and family risk factors correlated with increased odds of suicidal ideation, including verbal abuse, low community support, sexual abuse, and witnessing community violence. Utilizing multivariable modeling, emotional intelligence (protective factor), and early initiation of substance use, verbal abuse, PTSD, and historical losses (risk factors) were significant factors for suicide ideation, when controlling for all other factors. Interpretation: Adverse childhood experiences, early initiation of substance use, and PTSD increase suicide ideation and attempts. When youth experience positive and supportive family relationships, odds of suicide ideation are lower, which highlight pivotal areas for intervention and response. Funding: William T. Grant and Doris Duke Family Foundations.

  PublisherDOI

• Decolonizing mental health practice through traditional healing frameworks: Insights from Canada, China, Singapore, and the United States.

  American Psychologist · 2025-05-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Decolonial and liberation psychology aims to understand and address the social and epistemic injustices in our mental health systems, practices, and research agenda. To advance this goal, we advocate for deeper engagement with traditional healing systems practiced by various Indigenous Peoples and cultural groups around the world. In this article, we consider examples of Indigenous healing from Canada, China, Singapore, and the United States, to address a central question: What can we learn from these unique Indigenous healing traditions to inform mental health practices globally? Comparison shows that all these practices involve communal healing rituals grounded in spiritual, religious, and cultural knowledge systems related to embodied ways of knowing and that are embedded in social-ecological systems, including kinship, ancestral ties, and filial connections to the cosmology. To support further development of decolonial practice, it is crucial to attend to the complex interactions of cultural identity and sociocultural (relational, communal, political, and spiritual) factors underlying healing traditions in Indigenous communities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Health survivance: Decolonizing resilience for indigenous peoples in psychology.

  American Psychologist · 2025-11-01 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  Behavioral health inequity for American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs), stemming distally from histories of colonization and continual subjugation, is a challenge that has largely evaded mainstream psychological solutions. Eurocentric psychology conceptualizes the contemporary AI/AN behavioral health environment in terms of compounded trauma balanced at times by remarkable instances of resilience. Decolonized approaches to psychology require a paradigm shift away from approaches that uphold Eurocentric ideals of behavioral health. Resilience, despite its use by minoritized populations globally, remains rooted in hierarchical and comparative systems historically used to dehumanize and disenfranchise non-White communities. Instead, addressing AI/AN behavioral health inequity must center Indigenous ways of knowing, emphasizing continued presence achieved through active resistance. We contend that the concept of health survivance better meets the needs of AI/AN communities. In this article, we interrogate the foundations, utility, and bounds of health survivance through critical comparison with the established construct of resilience. We propose that health survivance differs from conventional resilience in four key ways: (a) resistance to unjust societal arrangements versus adaptation to the status quo; (b) recognition of a temporal arc inclusive of the past, present, and future versus focusing on individual lifespan; (c) persistence of community and culture versus personal adaptation and well-being; and (d) refusal of identities of victimization versus accentuating adversity and trauma. Incorporating health survivance into research and interventions to address existing behavioral health inequities enables a shift from Eurocentric approaches to health toward Indigenous agency in promoting well-being through resistance to the status quo, celebrating the recognition that we are still here. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Transcending trauma and embracing survivance in testimonies from survivors of the Beauval Indian Residential School of Canada

  Social Science & Medicine · 2025-06-25

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Trauma, coloniality and survivance among Indigenous peoples in the <scp>US</scp>

  World Psychiatry · 2025-01-15 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Psychological trauma has featured in the lives of Indigenous Americans (i.e., American Indians and Alaska Natives or, simply, Natives) in pronounced fashion since the arrival of Europeans to these lands. My own Indigenous people, the Aaniiih-Gros Ventres of the Northern Plains, for example, experienced cataclysmic adversity during the late 1860s. First, measles and smallpox – originally brought to North America by Europeans – swept through our homelands, decimating our people. Additionally, a massacre by Indigenous rivals, competitors for violent control of the Euro-American fur trade, combined to reduce our population by half within this same five-year period. Although we had become intimately acquainted with such setbacks during the preceding century, the late 1800s were especially devastating. By 1895, only 596 of us had survived on our Montana reservation. Our travails were not over. Diseases of poverty and malnutrition – tuberculosis, trachoma, scrofula – induced further suffering. Corrupt Indian agents ruled our lives in dictatorial fashion. Much of our territory, supposedly guaranteed by treaty with the US, was coercively ceded by government officials. A reservation industrial school was established to “civilize” us. One elderly woman blinded her grandson with her sewing awl rather than allowing him to be carried away to this loveless and abusive institution. The namesake of the Gone family endured ten years as a child in this boarding school. When he emerged, his mother and other relatives were dead, and nobody had told him. The brutality that he encountered there marred him, and later as a husband and father he wounded his own family. Since those desolate days, our homelands have remained hemmed in by racism and mired in poverty, with the accompanying ills of addiction, accident, violence and suicide being tragically common among our loved ones1. These realities are not unique to my people, but impact lives in hundreds of other Native American communities, for which the long legacy of colonial subjugation has sedimented for individuals and families as a cascade of trauma. In their review of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its symptoms among Native Americans, Bassett et al2 identified 37 studies published between 1993 and 2012. Although prevalence rates for the entire national Indigenous American population have not been reported, high-quality epidemiological findings exist for some samples and communities. High rates of PTSD in Native respondents were evident from population studies. Among Vietnam-era military veterans, lifetime PTSD in Indigenous veterans was the highest of any ethnoracial group. Native Americans were more likely than other Americans to report traumatic events, including physical attacks and threats to the well-being of loved ones. Indigenous men and women both reported high levels of vulnerability to trauma, but of different types: exposure to accidents for men and to violence for women. Native women were twice as likely as Native men to present lifetime PTSD as a result. Adverse childhood experiences such as physical and sexual abuse contributed independently above other risk factors to PTSD, though experiences of abuse, addiction, illness and violence in adulthood contributed to mood and anxiety disorders more generally. It has been argued that disproportionately high rates of PTSD among Indigenous Americans are primarily due to disproportionately high rates of exposure to trauma. Minimal research on potential benefits of PTSD treatment for our populations has been conducted. PTSD pertains to maladaptive responses to personal trauma. The construct has limitations, however, in accounting for the cascade of trauma described as the colonial legacy for Native Americans. Beginning in the 1990s, Indigenous health scholars heralded new ways of conceiving of Indigenous suffering from histories of colonization as complex trauma and intergenerational PTSD3. Described as a “soul wound” or “historical trauma”, this concept recognizes the condition of coloniality, arising from both past and ongoing subjugation, as causal for health inequities – and especially mental health inequities – within Native communities. During the past three decades, Indigenous historical trauma (IHT) has circulated widely in Native settings as an explanation for suffering, impairment and distress. IHT is described as differing from PTSD in several important ways (referred to as the “four Cs” of IHT4): it is colonial in origin, collective in impact, cumulative across waves of adversity, and cross-generational in its reach from ancestors to descendants. In essence, this concept historicizes and socializes trauma beyond the medicalized and individualized dysfunction of PTSD (which privileges the psychological and biological foundations associated with psychiatric illness), emphasizing community dis-order. Thus, whereas only a minority of Indigenous people might warrant a formal diagnosis of PTSD, nearly all Native people are understood to be impacted by IHT. Indeed, IHT offers an explanatory model for Indigenous social suffering, ensuring that prevalent mental health problems – addiction, PTSD, conduct disorder, and suicide5 – are related to their constituting social conditions, rooted in coloniality. Of course, it is nearly impossible to establish cause-effect relationships using the methodological tools of the health sciences to link specific instances of ancestral trauma among prior generations to the suffering of current descendants within Native communities. Many Indigenous proponents of IHT harbor high hopes for the burgeoning science of epigenetics to one day afford such links spanning multiple generations of Native people. Yet, Walters et al6 have called attention to conceptual confusion surrounding IHT with respect to future scientific investigation. Specifically, they noted that, over time, IHT has been characterized in the scholarly literature in four distinct ways: as etiology, mechanism, stressor, or syndrome. Similarly, Hartmann et al7 observed three modes of scholarly engagement with IHT across the scientific literature: as clinical condition, life stressor, or critical discourse. Gone et al8 described formidable limitations in the current measures of IHT that have been developed and deployed within the health sciences, concluding that, as a result, “this literature has yet to cohere into a body of knowledge with clear implications for health policy or professional practice”. Interestingly, few investigators have shown interest in establishing distinctive profiles of ancestral trauma for particular Native respondents (e.g., number of great-grandparents to survive a historical military massacre) or in designing studies that aspire to disentangle evidence for intergenerational causal impacts. All of this suggests that the real contributions of the concept of IHT are more critical and discursive rather than empirical and scientific1. Indeed, several non-scientific, discursive functions may be served by IHT1: explain Indigenous health inequities, re-socialize Native community health problems, destigmatize these conditions with reference to shared suffering, legitimate Native healing traditions, harness trauma discourse for claims-making, tap into more plentifully resourced health care services, and represent an Indigenous scholarly contribution to health research. Beyond these, IHT also anchors an “alter-Native psy-ence”5, an Indigenous mental health framework that contests and recasts conventional psychiatric knowledge across several domains: with respect to distress, IHT is preferred over mental disorders; with respect to well-being, Indigenous forms of relational selfhood are preferred over neoliberal individualism; with respect to intervention, Native healing traditions are preferred over empirically supported mental health treatments; and with respect to evaluation, Indigenous “ways of knowing” are preferred over scientific outcome studies. Perhaps most importantly, Native promotion of the concept of historical trauma expresses survivance in the health domain9. A portmanteau of “survival” and “resistance” introduced by Anishinaabe intellectual G. Vizenor, survivance attests to the improbable persistence of Indigenous peoples beyond the long colonial encounter. It rejects “victimry” and insists that Native self-determination is the way forward from trauma, PTSD, and colonial subjugation. It refuses narratives that reductively restrict attention away from Indigenous agency, kinship, love, struggle, tradition, humor and homeland. It insists that we shall remain.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Representations of Indigeneity in mental health research: A systematic review of American Indian and Alaska Native suicide publications 2010–2020

  American Journal of Community Psychology · 2025-09-02 · 1 citations

  reviewSenior author

  Suicide is a pressing issue for many, though far from all, Native American (Native) communities. Although there is significant mental health research on suicide among Native people, community authorities and scientific studies have questioned its relevance for any particular Native community. To examine its relevance, we conducted a systematic review of how Indigeneity and suicide were represented in mental health research on suicidal thoughts and behaviors among American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) published 2010-2020. Following guidance by Siddaway and colleagues (2019), seven databases were searched for publications focused on AI/AN suicide, yielding 937 citations; 240 full-text articles were screened for inclusion, and 72 articles were included in this review. These data capture trends in the mental health literature that homogenize Native peoples through the terms used and generalizations made, that racialize Native peoples as an ethnoracial minority group within the U.S., and that pathologize Native peoples by emphasizing health risks and vulnerabilities to the exclusion of Native strengths, resources, and resistance. This literature offered a distorted reflection of Native peoples and their experiences related to suicide, undercutting its potential relevance for Native communities. Recommendations for future research and guidance for Native community leaders are provided.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Dennis C. Wendt

  McGill University

  21 shared

• Anna Kawennison Fetter

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  17 shared

• Andrea Wiglesworth

  University of Minnesota

  17 shared

• Rachel E. Wilbur

  Washington State University

  16 shared

• Tony V Pham

  Harvard University

  14 shared

• William E. Hartmann

  13 shared

• Andrew Pomerville

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  13 shared

• Moustafa Abdalla

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  12 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Anthropology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1995

• M.A., Anthropology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1990

• B.A., Anthropology

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  1987

Awards & honors

• Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2021 APA Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions…
• 2023 APF Gold Medal Award for Impact in Psychology
• More than 25 fellowships and career awards