Major Scholars of Native American Historical Trauma:
Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart
Eduardo and Bonnie Duran
"IntergenerationalTrauma and Historical Grief in American Indians: A Review of Concepts of Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart" by Melanie Ottenbacher
Historical Trauma The collective emotional and psychological injury both over the life span and across generations, resulting from a cataclysmic history of genocide.
Causes: a legacy of genocide
Effects: unsettled trauma, increase of alcohol abuse, child abuse and domestic violence
3 Major Hypotheses:
1. Education increases awareness of trauma
2. Sharing effects of trauma provides relief
3. Grief resolution through collective mourning/healing creates
positive group identity and commitment to community
Six Phases of Historical Unresolved Grief
1st Contact: life shock, genocide, no time for grief
Colonization: introduction of disease and alcohol, traumatic events such as
Wounded Knee Massacre
EconomicCompetition: sustenance loss (physical/spiritual)
Invasion/War Period: extermination, refugee symptoms
Subjugation/Reservation Period: confined/translocated, forced dependency on
oppressor, lack of security
Boarding School Period: destroyed family system
beatings, rape, prohibition of Native language and religion;
Lasting Effect: ill-prepared for parenting, identity confusion
Forced Relocation and Termination Period: transfer to urban areas,
prohibition of religious freedom
racism/viewed as second class; loss of governmental system and community
Holocaust Link: Jews and American Indians
Holocaust
Survivors' child complex
Disenfranchised grief
Transposition
*fixation to trauma
*loss cannot be openly *living in the
*attempts to resolve past
mourned
past & present
Effects
Individual
1st Generation
Nightmares
Inhibited with Shame
Post Traumatic
Perceived obligation
Stress Disorder
to ancestors
Coping Strategies
Society Subsequent Generations
Memory Candles
Loss of ancestral
Historical Unresolved
(living testaments)
tradition
Trauma
Coping Strategies
Psychological: depression, suicide 2x national rate
Behavioral: alcohol 5.5x national rate
Medical: heart disease 2x national rate
Research
2 Tests
3 Major Themes
1) Parenting skills
Trauma Testimony
2) Group Intervention
Trauma Response
Transcending Trauma
Trauma Testimony: issues such as Massacre
at Wounded Knee, boarding school, boarding school descendant
Trauma Response: issues such as trauma identity, carrying trauma, anger,
transposition, survivor guilt, somatic symptoms
Transcending trauma: coping strategies, ideas about healing, transforming
the past
Solutions
Clinical/Spiritual Healing: communal grief rituals: storytelling and
sharing pain
Ideas for Social Workers and Therapists: increase cultural
sensitivity--research personal historical trauma, attend community activities
**Education increases awareness of trauma
**Sharing effects provides relief
**Collective grief resolution creates positive group identity and commitment to
community
Internalized Oppression
Once a people have been assaulted in a genocidal fashion, there
are psychological ramifications. With the victim's complete loss of power
comes despair, and the psyche reacts by internalizing what appears to be genuine
power--the power of the oppressor. The internalizing process begins when Native
American people internalize the oppressor, which is merely a caricature of the
power actually taken from Native American people. At this point, the
self-worth of the individual and/or group has sunk to a level of despair
tantamount to self-hatred. This self-hatred can be either internalized or
externalized. . . Research has demonstrated the grim reality of internalized
hatred result in suicide. . .Another way in which the internalized
self-hatred is manifested symptomatically is through the deaths of massive
numbers by alcoholism. When self-hatred is externalized, we encounter a level of
violence within the community that is unparalleled in any other group in
the country . . ." (Duran and Duran, 29)
Disenfranchised Grief
The sense that you cannot grieve; that no one hears or is
listening to your grief; the dominant culture acts as if you do not have
grief, or do not need to grieve. See Lisa Poupart's essay.