Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing

Introduction
of war and disease lost hope and social disintegration followed. This “disease factor” differentiates the
history of colonization of the Americas from other regions of the world. It explains why Europeans
were successful in destroying civilization after civilization in the New World. As Wright proposes:
Europe possessed biological weapons that fate had been stacking against America for
thousands of years. Among these were smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague,
yellow fever, cholera, and malaria - all unknown in the Western Hemisphere before
1492 (1992:13-14).
Aboriginal people were separated from their land, which was always sentient to them and affected
people’s lives and their social constitution through time. The introduction of non-traditional coping
mechanisms damaged families, altered gender roles and diminished cultural values. Indigenous people,
before contact, lived in a complex socio-economic system that required co-operation to maximize the
productivity of the landscape. After contact, Indigenous people were disfavoured in access to resources
and social opportunities and killed by diseases. Colonial powers introduced sharp status distinctions,
imposed strict rules for governing conduct, controlled the system of social rewards and punishments,
and manipulated power and status symbols. These alterations are generally discussed in reference to
past events, but it can be readily argued that the impacts have contemporary and generational application
and effect. According to many, colonialism belongs largely to the historical past and was replaced by
inequality and domination in other forms. This study is based on a proposition that the historical
experiences of First Nation people, which disrupted the process of Aboriginal cultural identity formation,
continue to resonate in the present and that the harm done in the past continues to manifest
intergenerationally into the present.
The Scope of the Study
This study investigates the issue of generationally transmitted and universal historic trauma to which
Indigenous people of the Americas were exposed during centuries of colonization. Intolerable, unresolved
and cumulative stress and grief experienced by communities and nations became translated, in time,
into a collective experience of cultural disruption and a collective memory of powerlessness and loss. In
turn, this was passed on to successive generations as a collective contagion, manifesting itself in a variety
of social problems that Aboriginal people across the continent continue to experience today. To
substantiate this thesis, an historical background is presented, drawing on examples from Indigenous
cultures that came in contact with forces of colonization and assimilation. These examples, which
include Indigenous nations of South and Central Americas, help explain how First Nation people were
traumatized in a global context and that this global context of trauma and suffering produces similar
psychological and social reactions in trauma victims, regardless of their cultural background or direct
experience with the original source of the trauma.
In his analysis of the Buffalo Creek disaster in southern West Virginia of the United States, which was
a devastating flood, Erikson (1976) spoke of two traumas: first, the occurrence of the event itself; and
second, the destruction of community life and the loss of social contacts. It has been repeatedly
demonstrated, in the case of Aboriginal people, that traumatic impact was widespread and profound,
and involved a shattering of family and community life. Alan Young (1995) argues the particularity of
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