Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing

Chapter 2
Analyzing the Trauma
In the Americas and Oceania, by contrast contact-induced disease was as much a prelude
to European domination as its aftermath. Here domination was facilitated, and even
made possible, by the devastating pandemics that decimated and demoralized whole
populations (Kunitz, 1994:3).
Early Period: Cultural Transition - Physical Area of Impact
The timing of initial contact with the colonizers, who slowly and methodically overwhelmed and
destroyed Indigenous societies, varied among the North American Aboriginal people. For the societies
in the east, first contact may be dated around 1500. The Aboriginal people of Alaska met the settlers
for the first time in 1740. According to Ubelaker (1988), the estimated population size of North
American Aboriginal people in 1500 was 1,894,280, with a possible range from 1,213,475 to 2,638,900.
Every hundred years that followed saw a rapid decline in the Aboriginal population: 1,801,080 in
1600; 1,404,745 in 1700; 1,051,688 in 1800; 770,981 in 1850; and the lowest population size in 1900
was 536,562. These figures represent a decline by over 1,364,00 persons or 72 per cent (Ubelaker,
1988). The magnitude of this demographic collapse has been debated and some researchers even
believe that the population decline across the Americas was over 90 per cent. Severe decline in the
population size has been attributed to outbreaks of introduced infectious diseases, such as smallpox,
measles and influenza, to which the Aboriginal population did not have immunity. In general, foodforaging
populations throughout history had relatively low rates of infectious diseases due to their small
population size and mobility (Dunn, 1968). Diseases that require larger contagious populations in
order to be transmitted were probably non-existent until the introduction of agriculture and pre-industrial
cities. These infectious diseases that first evolved in animal hosts domesticated in Europe, were not
present in the western hemisphere and were brought to the Americas by the colonizers.
Since the entire Indigenous population was exposed to these diseases and the majority of the exposed
contracted the diseases, no one was left to care for the sick and no one to provide food or water. Often,
several different infections were introduced at once or in quick succession. Traditional treatments did
not work and there was no notion of quarantine. Aboriginal people did not know what caused the
epidemics and could not find an effective cure. One researcher compared European contact with
Aboriginal societies to a “biological war:”
Smallpox was the captain of the men of death in that war, typhus fever the first lieutenant,
and measles the second lieutenant. More terrible than the conquistadors on horseback,
more deadly than sword and gunpowder, they made the conquest by the whites a walkover
as compared with what it would have been without their aid. They were the forerunners
of civilization, the companions of Christianity, the friends of the invader (Ashburn,
1947:98 as cited in Joralemon, 1982:112).
The Aboriginal societies who had the earliest and most frequent contact with Europeans were affected
earlier and more severely than those populations who had later or little interaction with disease-carrying
Europeans. According to Dobyns (1983), an outbreak was recorded as early as 1619, among coastal
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