Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing

Chapter 2
• the person may manifest diminished responsiveness to the external world, referred to as psychic
numbing or emotional anaesthesia.
As early as 1889, psychologist Pierre Janet noted that emotionally intense events are made traumatic
when the integration of the experience is interfered with. This would have been the experience of
Aboriginal people as they fought to survive increasingly hostile and unrelenting attempts to assimilate
and destroy their social and cultural environments. “Janet believed that intense emotions cause a
dissociation of memories from consciousness and result in the memories being stored as anxieties, panic
nightmares, and flashbacks. Janet observed that his patients had difficulty learning from their experience
and seemed to focus a great deal of energy on keeping their emotions under control” (cited in O’Meara,
1997:71).
According to the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, 4 th edition (DSM-IV), a person
who suffers from PTSD may complain of feeling detached or estranged from other people. His or her
ability to feel emotions of any type, especially those associated with intimacy, tenderness and sexuality
is markedly decreased. Many report change in aggression and a form of irritability with a fear of losing
control. The fear is conscious and pervasive and the reduced capacity for modulation may express itself
in unpredictable explosions of aggressive behaviour or an inability to express angry feelings. Symptoms
of depression and anxiety are common and impulsive behaviour can occur. Impairment may be severe
and affect nearly every aspect of life. Phobic avoidance of situations or activities resembling or symbolizing
the original trauma may interfere with interpersonal relationships such as marriage or family life.
Emotional lability (state of being unstable or changeable), depression and guilt may result in selfdefeating
behaviours or suicidal actions. Psycho-active substance use disorders are common complications
(American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Symptoms of PTSD are even more complicated in children.
Children have the sense that they are reliving the past; that they are reliving the occurrence of trauma in
action, and there is a marked change in orientation toward the future. This can include a sense of a
foreshortened future (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).
What happens when an entire population experiences post-traumatic stress disorder compounded by
recurrent stressors? What happens if the disturbing, intrusive memories of genocide become internalized
by a society that, as a whole, disengages itself from life and gets involved in circular re-living of trauma,
generation after generation? What happens when individual multiple symptoms of PTSD become
expressed by entire populations and begin to be passed through overt behavioural patterns to their
children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, together with unanalyzed and, therefore, unresolved
memories of loss and separation? According to Hallowell:
The old Ojibwa character was also built on a psychological foundation which required
a maximum of inner control, since, from the standpoint of their social organization,
highly institutionalized outer controls and sanctions were practically absent. This
psychological feature of the Ojibwa is also the basis of the so-called “social atomism” of
their [A]boriginal society (1967:236).
What happens when a whole nation loses a sense of control over its own psychological resources?
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