The purpose of the project is to allow Alaska Native Elders the opportunity to share their ideas about the origin of abuse of elderly and to share ways to reduce and control occurrences of abuse. In order to be more culturally appropriate, the research team decided to use the terms "respect" and "disrespect" rather than "abuse." The study group consisted of three Alaska Native Elders from the five main cultural groups in Alaska, for a total of fifteen respondents. These Elders were recruited utilizing snowball sampling. Through interviews, the Elders were asked a series of questions about the role of Elders in their community, Elder disrespect, and how problems can be addressed. These open-ended interviews were then analyzed using a qualitative approach, which allowed the hypotheses to be drawn directly from the raw data. The findings indicate that, from the Alaska Native worldview, origin of respect is connected with the tradition of listening, or oral tradition. The tradition of listening has relevancy in the modern world. The cycle of respect has been broken and, as a result, there has been a dramatic increase in disrespect. There are culturally appropriate ways to approach the problem of Alaska
Native Elder abuse or disrespect.