“Carrying Your History is a Form of Resilience”: Reconceptualizing Resilience from an Indigenous Perspective Through Family Storytelling Among Palestinians Residing in the United States

The purpose of this study is to reconceptualize resilience in a way that focuses on communities who have endured long-standing, generational trauma, and structural violence. This study specifically critiques the often passive, individualistic, and neutral understanding of resilience by examining how Palestinians residing in the United States understand and enact resilience. In the face of historic and present-day trauma, the term sumud embodies Palestinian resilience, resistance, and steadfastness. Through 25 semi-structured interviews, findings illustrate four layers of sumud: Identity, family, community, and society. These interconnected forces and power dynamics influenced how Palestinians in the United States enacted sumud. However, findings also revealed the importance of family communication and the act of storytelling as a central means of learning and cultivating sumud.