Center for Participatory Research

RezRIDERS Project

Description: With more than 45% of New Mexico’s American Indian (AI) high school students reporting alcohol use—including binge drinking—substance abuse prevention among AI youth needs urgent attention. Many existing mainstream programs come up short by failing to speak to high-risk AI youth on their own terms. Not so with RezRIDERS (Reducing Risk through Interpersonal Development, Empowerment, Resiliency and Self Determination). Tailored to high-risk AI youth, RezRIDERS fills a gap in substance abuse prevention by recapturing a key historic tradition and addressing the lived experience within AI culture. Traditionally, youth tested themselves in nature under elders’ mentorship, as elders taught them the relevant stories and cultural practices. Youth applied their new knowledge—gained in a context of extreme physical challenge—toward empowerment and community participation. RezRIDERS offers a sustainable program with proven youth appeal to where other tribes, beyond the proposed pilot, wish to implement the program. RezRIDERS pairs rebel extreme-sports (ES) with an evidence-based cognitive-behavioral curriculum, community responsibility, and adult cultural mentors; the result is an indigenized year-round—and life changing—program that speaks loud and clear to high-risk AI youth.

The RezRIDERS curriculum was written by an AI professional snowboard instructor, who worked with AI youth in snowboarding programs developing the curriculum as a graduate student in public health. The author developed RezRIDERS ideas and found the combination of Extreme Sport & Experiential Education activities combined with cultural connections (Examples: Being AI, and types of tribal affiliation) promoted critical youth-driven dialogue around their lives and worldviews.

Expected Benefit: AI youth and adult mentors will benefit from a cognitive-behavioral and self-determination curriculum where participants will 1) experience Extreme Sport activities along side adult tribal mentors, 2) where peer networks can be influenced positively through diffusion of RezRIDERS participant experiences, and generates 3) direct community benefit through youth-driven action projects while working towards 4) health and education attainment goals through culturally grounded environments.

Evaluation Plan: RezRIDERS uses mixed-methods (qualitative/quantitative) approaches, blending Western and Indigenous theory to guide psycho-social measures around youth hardiness, self-efficacies, self-determination, optimism, cultural connectedness, mental well being and ATOD use, and actions for improving community health.