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 />
been spilled on both sides, even the most biased of historians must admit that ours has<br />
been enormously the greatest loss … especially when considering the facts of genocide,<br />
foreign diseases, the destruction of our culture <strong>and</strong> the loss of our country. The whole<br />
story of conflict has still not been told … Today, our posture is that of a defeated people,<br />
yes. But a people who did not bend, <strong>and</strong> had to be broken. And even when broken, we<br />
are a people who arose again <strong>and</strong> again to fight once more. Today, in a different arena<br />
<strong>and</strong> with tools of policy, strategy, <strong>and</strong> legal negotiation, we are fighting still. We often<br />
read about Indian “terror, wars, resistance to progress.” Nowhere has there been told the<br />
full story of courageous Indian resistance to the onslaught of the European, or the open<br />
<strong>and</strong> brutal attacks upon the Native by the white invaders (Henry in Indian Voices,<br />
1970:111).<br />
Today’s Elders know that, although some aspects of the <strong>Aboriginal</strong> social self were deeply hurt <strong>and</strong><br />
damaged, there is yet another side of the <strong>Aboriginal</strong> psyche: the <strong>Aboriginal</strong> spiritual self that is full of<br />
positive energy, waiting to be revealed <strong>and</strong> used in the right way. The Elders see the effects of colonization<br />
<strong>and</strong> the subsequent collapse of <strong>Aboriginal</strong> social structures as central to the cause of the disintegration<br />
of <strong>Aboriginal</strong> communities, traditions <strong>and</strong>, in turn, individuals. One Elder states:<br />
In the early days, when our families <strong>and</strong> communities were ripped apart by colonialism,<br />
when our communities were disintegrating <strong>and</strong> you had kids taken away from the parents,<br />
the children removed <strong>and</strong> put into residential schools or missions, then you had parents<br />
who were already into alcoholism, you had gr<strong>and</strong>parents of that same generation that<br />
were stripped from the practice of their ceremonies, their spirituality (Elder cited in<br />
Ellerby <strong>and</strong> Ellerby, 1998:x).<br />
Another Elder further states:<br />
Our dignity was taken away … <strong>and</strong> a lot of people don’t realize that. They don’t really<br />
underst<strong>and</strong> about how our dignity was taken away from us, how we were taught to be<br />
ashamed to be Natives. Then our self-respect was gone. Once you lose your self-respect,<br />
how can you respect someone else? Then you take your frustrations out on other people<br />
(Elder cited in Ellerby <strong>and</strong> Ellerby, 1998:ix-x).<br />
Battiste, a member of the Mi’kmaq Nation <strong>and</strong> a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, says in<br />
the introduction to <strong>Aboriginal</strong> Education: Fulfilling the Promise that, in order for the “new <strong>Aboriginal</strong><br />
story” to unfold, people’s fully actualized selves must be:<br />
[R]ecognized as the foundation for their future. But we are not whole yet, having been<br />
diminished by our past, <strong>and</strong> we do not know who will articulate that future, that new<br />
story. <strong>Aboriginal</strong> government? <strong>Aboriginal</strong> politicians? Elders? Educators? The<br />
responsibility ultimately rests with <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people themselves in a continuing journey<br />
of collaboration <strong>and</strong> negotiation, healing <strong>and</strong> rebuilding, creating <strong>and</strong> experimenting,<br />
<strong>and</strong> visioning <strong>and</strong> celebrating (2000:ix).<br />
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