Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing

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