Many insular communities—whether they be tribal, extremely rural, or otherwise on the periphery of mainstream society—suffer from the application of one-size-fits-all disaster response frameworks. Although the assistance those regimes offer might be necessary in the short term, their long-term homogenizing effect can reach far beyond the initial response to threaten a way of life.

“Any damn fool can get power restored or get a Wal-Mart reopened,” Mervyn Tano, president of the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management, told an audience gathered at a Natural Hazards Workshop session on rural and tribal vulnerability. “The hard part is reinvigorating traditional tribal practices.”

Often, overarching plans fail to understand that a concept as simple as a housing—shelter from the elements—can be very different from one group to another. For instance, Native families are configured differently thanl suburban families, and disaster plans need to take that into account, Tano said. A structure’s use and what it means to people should be considered alongside its more basic functions. Tano pointed to the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Alaska as an example of how community identity can be incorporated when working with traditional communities. The group understands that a house is more than a dwelling, he said; it is part of an identity.

Understanding that identity can be difficult for planners that aren’t part of the community—often a culture can’t be defined from the outside looking in. Rosina Philippe, a spokesperson for Grand Bayou Families United, commented on the way Native people are seen by broader society. According to Philippe, her people understand themselves in context of their history and attachment to place, not by the vulnerabilities attached to them since Hurricane Katrina.

A strong sense of place—another concept cherished by traditional societies, but dismissed by modern ones—can help make a society resistant to disaster. One of the biggest problems facing indigenous people today is being relocated from traditional lands, said Juan Pablo Sarmiento of Florida International University.

The Latin American communities Sarmiento works with have strong ties to environment and good mechanisms to cope with local weather conditions. This has allowed them to exist naturally where they are, but encroaching ideas of mainstream society can threaten that.

“Many minority rural populations are losing cultural and historical disaster management knowledge because they are adopting knowledge of the majority,” he said.

As Sarmiento sees it, one contributor to vulnerability is people who have been moved from their ancestral land and relocated to areas that are less productive. People have been marginalized and labeled as a minority. In the short term, this status may also provide opportunities, but in the long term can cause a uniform mentality that degrades a group’s customs, values, and attitudes.

To overcome this, disaster planners and others that aid indigenous people must work with groups beforehand to create plans that fit the needs and beliefs of members. As a community planner for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Diana Coho works directly with U.S. tribes to create multi-hazard mitigation plans. In her experience, she said, there is no one approach to planning that works for all groups. Instead, each group's cultural and societal needs must be considered.

“You have to be committed to respecting cultures,” she said, adding that it makes for a much more time-consuming and labor-intensive process.

Unfortunately, there is still a tendency to view various cultures with a Western lens. Once a group’s identity and knowledge have been altered, it’s often too late for even tribal members to see things any other way.

“It’s very much like the French trying to fend off Hollywood,” Tano said. “The pervasiveness of Western culture is difficult to overcome.”