Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing
by Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, Ph.D. and Magdalena Smolewski, Ph.D.
by Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, Ph.D. and Magdalena Smolewski, Ph.D.
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Chapter 4<br />
Further, the spiritual or psychic sensitivity that makes it possible for the Elders <strong>and</strong> the more spiritually<br />
advanced to “know, hear <strong>and</strong> see” the ancient spiritual teachings <strong>and</strong> keep them alive, has also made<br />
<strong>Aboriginal</strong> people more susceptible to the deep under-currents of grief that drift in the deep waters of<br />
our collective stream of consciousness. Rose Auger notes that she works directly with the spirits that<br />
teach her:<br />
I work with 126 of these spirits. They are my ancestors, my people. I am still very<br />
young, so I still have a long way to go to learn who they all are. Each year more come<br />
to work with me <strong>and</strong> tell me that this is who I am, <strong>and</strong> that this is my duty. There’s one<br />
gr<strong>and</strong>mother who’s been coming to me called Earth Blanket Woman. She’s coming<br />
here to tell us what we need to do for what’s coming. Through this winter, she came<br />
<strong>and</strong> told us that we have to make special medicines <strong>and</strong> teas so that we can stay healthy<br />
because there were going to be flu’s [sic] worse than there had ever been. That a lot of<br />
people would end up in the hospital because of something in the atmosphere. It’s going<br />
to be like that more <strong>and</strong> more, diseases that aren’t here yet but are coming (as cited in<br />
Johnson <strong>and</strong> Budnick, 1994:143).<br />
<strong>Historic</strong>al records show that her underst<strong>and</strong>ing is not the full story, that nothing yet has ever matched<br />
those first four hundred years of disease <strong>and</strong> destruction. However, the knowledge of what happened in<br />
the early contact period, for the most part, was left silenced in the past, as other more immediate trauma<br />
manifested.<br />
This study’s theory contemplates the idea that if “traditional” people could pick up the vibrations of<br />
coming epidemics in their minds, they <strong>and</strong> other inter-connected Indigenous people could pick up the<br />
vibrations of grief that would also be freely floating in the universe from earlier times. This means that<br />
<strong>Aboriginal</strong> people would be reading, hearing or feeling their own stream of consciousness. The stream<br />
would be uniquely <strong>Aboriginal</strong> in experience <strong>and</strong> transmitted through a genetic marker or code, as<br />
Haney suggested. Memory of the past would also become a matter of interpretation as time went by.<br />
Although, as noted earlier, there was no place on the continent where <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people were able to<br />
deal with their shock <strong>and</strong> grief in the moments <strong>and</strong> years of the most terrible events happening, as<br />
everything had to be set aside for the sake of survival of the few.<br />
Perhaps now it is time for a descent into the deeper depths of historic despair where Indigenous people<br />
can make their way back through memories, oral traditions, written words <strong>and</strong> deeper sorrows. Then,<br />
Indigenous people can collectively create newer underst<strong>and</strong>ings <strong>and</strong> go willingly through the painful<br />
memories, once again, in order to resolve <strong>and</strong> release the historic trauma <strong>and</strong> free themselves from its<br />
tyranny.<br />
This is strongly stated by Elder Jeannette Henry who noted in 1970 that:<br />
One of the most important elements to be found in the history of this nation, as well as<br />
in the history of the Native races of this country, is that of conflict between the Europeans<br />
<strong>and</strong> the Indians from the time of first contact, through the ages <strong>and</strong> until the end of the<br />
19 th century. Nearly four hundred years of such conflict occurred, perhaps the longest<br />
period of war <strong>and</strong> near-war in human history. While it is perfectly true that blood has<br />
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