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 />
repetition of traumatic events more likely; people who are not able to represent to<br />
themselves a traumatic event find themselves acting it out or suffering from automatic<br />
memories - flashbacks - in some excessive, symptomatic way (1999:1-2).<br />
<strong>Aboriginal</strong> people are beginning to underst<strong>and</strong> that many of their social problems they deal with everyday<br />
have roots in the extensive historic trauma experienced <strong>and</strong> was never properly represented. The metanarrative<br />
of the Western world simply did not include the entire <strong>Aboriginal</strong> story of loss <strong>and</strong><br />
impermanence. Collectively, one may refer to <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people as “the bereaved:” those who have<br />
been deprived of something dear - their cultural identity <strong>and</strong> their social self. Bereavement is always<br />
associated with grief. If one perceives loss as separating oneself from a part of life to which one was<br />
emotionally attached, <strong>Aboriginal</strong> grief may be understood as an attempt to restore equilibrium to their<br />
social system. It involves all of the emotional, cognitive <strong>and</strong> perceptual reactions that accompany such<br />
loss. Ideally, it should be followed by a recovery that involves survivors restructuring their lives.<br />
According to Spikes (1980), grieving has three broad stages. In the first stage, called denial <strong>and</strong> anger,<br />
the bereaved feels angry <strong>and</strong> frustrated by their loss. The second stage, depression, is characterized by<br />
apathy <strong>and</strong> disorganized behaviour. Finally, in the third stage, called acceptance <strong>and</strong> readjustment, the<br />
bereaved reorganize their lives.<br />
For <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people, loss of their cultural identity was not an abrupt event, but continued in one form<br />
or another through centuries of intense pain <strong>and</strong> suffering, <strong>and</strong> they were never able to reach the<br />
recovery stage. In a sense, they are still grieving their losses with only limited outside social resources to<br />
help them in the process.<br />
An <strong>Aboriginal</strong> discourse of loss was always treated as marginal to a Western narrowly-defined historical<br />
memory. Researchers, anthropologists, social workers <strong>and</strong> mental health practitioners working with<br />
<strong>Aboriginal</strong> people consistently failed to identify focal issues in <strong>Aboriginal</strong> history of dispossession <strong>and</strong><br />
oppression. They failed to integrate <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people’s narratives into the history of colonization that,<br />
for the invaders, always included themes of power <strong>and</strong> hierarchy; never of relationships between them<br />
<strong>and</strong> the rightful owners of the l<strong>and</strong>s they came to occupy. Even if the history of oppression was critically<br />
analyzed, the analysis always followed rules of linear causality, <strong>and</strong> denying the importance of the interdependence<br />
of historical facts that influenced <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people’s lives.<br />
Since the issue of repetitive <strong>and</strong> circular historical trauma never truly entered into Western perception,<br />
as it was never properly analyzed <strong>and</strong> never understood, no healing modality was designed to assist<br />
<strong>Aboriginal</strong> people to prepare for, or respond to, the dem<strong>and</strong>s associated with such a profound social<br />
crisis <strong>and</strong> cultural loss. The crisis victims were never, in any sense, assisted in underst<strong>and</strong>ing the<br />
development stages through which the trauma has passed or will pass, in recognizing the specific problems<br />
resulting from that crisis, in re-organizing their lives <strong>and</strong>, particularly, in identifying <strong>and</strong> applying<br />
viable problem-resolution strategies or in what Slaikeu (1984) describes as “working through the crisis.”<br />
Instead of working through the trauma, people became caught up at the second stage of grieving;<br />
somewhere between anger <strong>and</strong> depression, apathy <strong>and</strong> disorganization. They began practicing social<br />
disengagement that, according to social theorists, can be a consequence of several factors. One of the<br />
most prominent of these is role loss as the individual’s position in society changes. With an increasing<br />
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