Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing

Chapter 2
the Grandmothers, the Mothers, the clans, and the people. At the end of the fifteenth
century, Anglo-European time, the old world that the tribes, Nations, and Confederacies
lived in began to be torn apart (Allen, 1986:194).
A bond of relatedness exists in Aboriginal cultural traditions, which connects the natural environment
and the Aboriginal system of social and cultural action and economic practice. Destruction of the
“physical sphere” in the early period of colonization damaged this bond of relatedness. Unlike the
dominant (western) traditions where the environment is linked to the social system primarily through
its instrumental value, in Indigenous traditions, a complementary relationship holds between the
landscape and economic and social actions. This landscape provides a physical manifestation of truth
of the Aboriginal spiritual system and gives the system a sense of solidity, resilience and resistance to
change. Aboriginal creation mythology established a bond of a shared life force between humans and
non-human species. This bond is a moral, social and psychological nexus connecting humans, animals
and the landscape. Contrary to the dominant western societal paradigm, Aboriginal social and economic
realms do not stop with the human species. Aboriginal ritual and economic participation in the
environment is intended as a form of control and what happened (and is happening) in the environment.
There is also a personal commitment to the well-being of the Aboriginal people’s landscape that, for
them, has meaning beyond utility.
In general, spirituality is defined as an attachment to all that concerns the life of the soul. Jacques
Maritain, a Catholic philosopher, once said:
A spiritual soul cannot be corrupted, since it possesses no matter; it cannot be
disintegrated, since it has no substantial parts; it cannot lose its individual unity, since it
is self-subsisting, nor its integral energy, since it contains within itself all the sources of
its energies … [It] … cannot die. Once it exists, it cannot disappear; it will necessarily
exist for ever, endure without end (1952:60).
It is beyond the scope of this study to discuss why missionaries believed that they could change the
spiritual soul of “the savages,” even though, according to their own belief system, it was eternal and selfsubstituting.
The only answer would probably be that missionaries did not believe Aboriginal people
had a soul at all. As soul-less beings, Aboriginal people were not aware of the Christian ultimate divine
reality or of the eternal, which is infinitely other and greater than man, and they were in dire need of
becoming enlightened. Enlightenment was achieved by imposing many strict prohibitions on the
traditional ritual life of Aboriginal people. Those who converted were forbidden to practice any aspect
of their traditions: “Converts were required to destroy their charms … and were forbidden to use
dreams as guides to their actions. Because they could no longer consult with shamans about desires of
the soul, Christians [Indians] were deprived of an important means for resolving personal frustrations
within the context of a highly conformist society” (Trigger, 1985:256). Aboriginal people were not
allowed to participate in public feasts and celebrations and could not take part in the network of economic
reciprocity and redistribution. New converts were prohibited from contacting their “traditional” friends
or even helping them when they were sick and traditional burial ceremonies were prohibited. Converts
were encouraged to wear rosaries around their necks. Community after community became divided
and segregated into Christians and traditionalists.
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