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 1<br />
<strong>Historic</strong>al Background<br />
European Arrival in the Americas<br />
Presently they saw naked people, <strong>and</strong> the Admiral [Columbus] went ashore in the armed<br />
ship’s boat with the royal st<strong>and</strong>ard displayed. So did the captains of the Pinta <strong>and</strong> Nina<br />
… in their boats, with the banners of the Expedition, on which were depicted a green<br />
cross with an F on one arm <strong>and</strong> a Y on the other, <strong>and</strong> over each his or her crown. And,<br />
all having rendered thanks to Our Lord kneeling on the ground, embracing it with tears<br />
of joy for the immeasurable mercy of having reached it, the Admiral rose, <strong>and</strong> gave this<br />
isl<strong>and</strong> the name of San Salvador. Thereupon he summoned to him the two captains,<br />
Rodrigo de Escobedo secretary of the armada <strong>and</strong> Rodrigo Sánchez of Segovia, <strong>and</strong> all<br />
others who came ashore, as witnesses; <strong>and</strong> in the presence of many natives of that l<strong>and</strong><br />
assembled together, took possession of that isl<strong>and</strong> in the name of the Catholic Sovereigns<br />
with appropriate words <strong>and</strong> ceremony (Morison, 1942:228-229).<br />
With appropriate pomp <strong>and</strong> ceremony, the lives of Indigenous people of the Americas were to be<br />
forever changed. Initially, there was little reason for the people of this small Caribbean Isl<strong>and</strong> to be<br />
alarmed. The strangers arrived, they likely appeared relatively friendly <strong>and</strong> there would not have been<br />
enough of them to cause any immediate concern. However, it would not have been very long before<br />
those feelings would have begun to change. As the Indigenous people became increasingly aware that<br />
the newcomers not only meant to stay indefinitely, they also meant to take over everything, including<br />
the <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people’s l<strong>and</strong>s, crops, homes <strong>and</strong> even their very lives. Then the people began to die<br />
(Indigenous people had their own tribal names <strong>and</strong> there is no way for us to know what term these<br />
people used other than that they were referred to as “Arawak” by the explorers). By 1493, the native<br />
population of San Salvador <strong>and</strong> its neighbouring Isl<strong>and</strong> Hispaniola was completely devastated by the<br />
first influenza epidemic <strong>and</strong>, by 1530, there remained only 28,000 of an original estimated population<br />
of 8-10 million people (Cook, 1998).<br />
Several studies of the Indigenous population in the years immediately following 1492 have emphasized<br />
the biological <strong>and</strong> cultural catastrophes that occurred. Far beyond simply annotating distant historical<br />
events, these studies can also speak to <strong>and</strong> provide a greater underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the psychological elements<br />
of encountering once-isolated people (Larsen <strong>and</strong> Milner, 1994) <strong>and</strong> of the far-reaching historical<br />
consequences. Taking an anthropological viewpoint of historical research on epidemics can clarify<br />
specific elements of the psychological, social <strong>and</strong> cultural traumata that resulted. Intensive trauma<br />
would not only have contributed a great deal to the inability of Indigenous people to effectively protect<br />
their cosmological beliefs <strong>and</strong> social systems, it would have rendered reconstruction of their devastated<br />
social <strong>and</strong> economic systems impossible. Demographic collapse would have intruded upon the integration<br />
of changing circumstances into cultural practices <strong>and</strong> beliefs, <strong>and</strong> forced Indigenous people into a<br />
reactive stance against European influences.<br />
Sustained contact with Europeans had an overwhelming effect on the size of the Indigenous population<br />
across the entire continent. From a larger perspective, “anthropologists … [have found] a causal<br />
relationship between size of a population <strong>and</strong> cultural change <strong>and</strong> evolution” (Denevan, 1976:xvii).<br />
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