Gayle Morse Also Recognized in APA Presidential Citation for Work Advancing a Culturally Informed Ethics Code for Psychologists

Gayle Morse

“Protecting and Defending our People: Nakni tushka anowa (The Warrior’s Path),” a report co-authored by Russell Sage College Professor of Psychology Gayle Skawen:nio Morse, Ph.D., is cited in the American Psychological Association’s apology for contributing to systemic racism, issued on Oct. 29.

In the text of the apology, the APA acknowledged that it “benefited greatly” from “Protecting and Defending Our People,” which “reflects upon how APA and psychology can shed racist and colonial roots to embody the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion to become an actively antiracist discipline.”

Morse chaired the Warriors Path Task Force as a member of APA Division 45, the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race, which released the report. The report originally appeared in the Journal of Indigenous Research in February 2021.

Morse is also recognized in an APA Presidential Citation honoring the Society of Indian Psychologists. She is a former president of the society and named among SIP leaders whose efforts have led to “significantly greater awareness of the specific cultural needs of communities of color, the importance for all psychologists to ensure culturally-competent practice and the critical need to incorporate concepts of culture and diversity and include collectivist viewpoints within any future Ethics Code.”

Morse has received APA’s Joseph E. Trimble and Jewell Horvat award for contributions to native and indigenous psychology and its Sweetgrass Award, honoring a psychology professional who advances indigenous values through professionalism and service.

She frequently speaks and writes about ethics, social justice, women, student learning and the neuropsychological effects of environmental toxins. 

Her recent scholarship includes “Human Rights and Psychology from Indigenous Perspectives,” a co-authored chapter in The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Human Rights, which received the APA Division of International Psychology’s Ursula Gielen Book Award for an outstanding book in global psychology and is a finalist for the Association of American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence.

As a professor of Counseling and Community Psychology and director of the graduate Psychology programs at Sage, Morse emphasizes cultural competency and cultural humility in the professional skills classes she teaches and in her work with graduate students during their internships and thesis projects. 

She is a New York state licensed psychologist with a private practice and an enrolled member of the Mohawk tribe.

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