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 2<br />
Early Period - Cultural Transition - Economic Area of Impact<br />
Most encounters between human beings <strong>and</strong> their environment have entailed processes of change <strong>and</strong><br />
adaptation. Nothing, however, was more devastating than the encounter between the colonial settler<br />
groups <strong>and</strong> Indigenous societies <strong>and</strong> the l<strong>and</strong>s they conquered over the past five centuries. <strong>Aboriginal</strong><br />
people exploited nature for subsistence <strong>and</strong> not for profit. In doing so, they demonstrated a profound<br />
respect for their natural surroundings, all of which they imbued with symbolic meaning. They understood<br />
that “men have the skill <strong>and</strong> technology to kill many animals, too many, <strong>and</strong> it is part of the responsibilities<br />
of the hunter not to kill more than he is given, <strong>and</strong> not to “play” with animals by killing them for fun or<br />
self-aggr<strong>and</strong>izement” (Feit, 1987:76). They always knew their l<strong>and</strong> to a degree that was unthinkable<br />
for Westerners proudly equipped with scientific knowledge. Before first contact, the Indigenous<br />
population in North America subsisted on small <strong>and</strong> large game, fish from coastal <strong>and</strong> river areas, <strong>and</strong><br />
with vegetable foods as the bulk of their diet.<br />
As in all other hunting-gathering societies, the <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people had extensive knowledge about their<br />
environment <strong>and</strong> had developed the appropriate skills to utilize it. In that regard, they were more than<br />
ecological humanists. They were not just humanists because humanism often under-estimates the fact<br />
that humans are natural beings. They were not just ecologists because ecology often neglects implications<br />
of the fact that humans are also social <strong>and</strong> cultural beings. Somehow, <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people were able to<br />
acknowledge the specificity of humans without assuming that they were the only beings of value in the<br />
world. Their human interests did not conflict with interests of other beings (understood as environment).<br />
For them, wealth was possibly not seen as a means to the end of the good life (as in the Aristotelian<br />
tradition brought to the New World by the Europeans), growth was not seen as a means to the end of<br />
wealth (as the classical political economy dictates) <strong>and</strong> growth was not seen as an end in itself (as the<br />
modern economic theory prophesizes).<br />
There were very dramatic differences between modes of production traditionally employed by Indigenous<br />
people <strong>and</strong> those introduced by the colonizers. <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people’s reasons for production before contact<br />
were production for use with a low consumption level <strong>and</strong> sharing-based exchange. In contrast, industrial<br />
(capitalist) philosophy dictates that one produce for profit <strong>and</strong> exchanges are market-based (with a high<br />
consumption level). In the case of the former, the division of labour was family-based with overlapping<br />
gender roles. In the case of the latter, division of labour was (<strong>and</strong> is) class-based, with a high degree of<br />
occupational specialization. In <strong>Aboriginal</strong> societies, property relations were egalitarian <strong>and</strong> collective.<br />
In Western systems, they were (<strong>and</strong> are) stratified <strong>and</strong> private. <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people used their resources<br />
extensively but temporarily, while the intruders subscribed to systems of intensive <strong>and</strong> exp<strong>and</strong>ing resource<br />
use.<br />
Finally, <strong>Aboriginal</strong> economic systems were marked by high sustainability; while in industrial systems,<br />
sustainability was always low. For economists, this means that capitalism involves world trade in goods<br />
<strong>and</strong> global transfers of labour <strong>and</strong> resources (Wallerstein, 1979) that, together with aggressive competition<br />
for markets, resources <strong>and</strong> labour, leads to the incorporation of peripheral societies by the core societies<br />
(Hall, 1996). Core societies specialize in manufacturing, while periphery nations provide raw materials.<br />
According to Wallerstein (1979) <strong>and</strong> Hall (1996), this system works to the advantage of core nations<br />
that experience economic growth <strong>and</strong> become wealthy <strong>and</strong> developed, <strong>and</strong> to the disadvantage of<br />
periphery nations, which ultimately become trapped in poverty <strong>and</strong> dependency.<br />
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