History, Healing, and Hope: Reconceptualizing Crisis Renewal Theory by Developing a Model for Marginalized Communities

This study of two severely-affected, historically-marginalized communities expands current understanding of the crisis renewal theory by revealing the complexity of being prospective in the aftermath of a school shooting and following the devastation of a major hurricane. For the American Indians on the Red Lake Reservation in Minnesota and the African Americans in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, history and group antecedents defined the crisis and complicated the sense-making process. This study proposes a model to reflect the established crisis renewal theory (Figure 1); followed by a community model of renewal (Figure 2) as an alternative perspective.