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 3<br />
psychiatric diagnosis other than PTSD was relatively, but not significantly, associated with higher cortisol<br />
levels. Offspring with both parental PTSD <strong>and</strong> lifetime PTSD had the lowest cortisol levels of all study<br />
groups. Yehuda <strong>and</strong> others conclude that:<br />
[P]arental PTSD, a putative risk factor for PTSD, appears to be associated with low<br />
cortisol levels in offspring, even in the absence of lifetime PTSD in the offspring. The<br />
findings suggest that low cortisol levels in PTSD may constitute a vulnerability marker<br />
related to parental PTSD as well as a state-related characteristic associated with acute or<br />
chronic PTSD symptoms (2000:1252 as cited in Kellermann, 2000:13).<br />
Although there is no clinical research on the further transgenerational transmission of the PTSD<br />
predisposition, it is safe to hypothesize that the effect may replicate itself in future generations in a<br />
similar manner. Having purposefully avoided the word “unconsciousness” in this analysis, it is proposed<br />
that the sense of loss <strong>and</strong> grief reported by many <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people in the present may be a direct legacy<br />
of the genetically coded trauma that manifests itself in the not-fully-remembered memories of past<br />
suffering (however controversial this theory may seem). This area of study certainly requires further<br />
research.<br />
This is not to say that <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people have been programmed <strong>and</strong> doomed by their heredity. It has<br />
been well-documented in psychology literature that the development of collective memory is influenced<br />
by both heredity <strong>and</strong> environment in such a way that the two factors are inseparable (Gottlieb, 1983).<br />
It is more productive to think of the <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people’s traumatic endowment as setting certain limits<br />
on their interaction with their social environment, mainly causing cultural discontinuities <strong>and</strong> creating<br />
a cultural cohort effect (a cohort here is a group of people who share similar socio-cultural experiences).<br />
Today’s <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people’s narrative of grief <strong>and</strong> their present reality confirm the past narrative of loss.<br />
In a sense, today’s generations <strong>and</strong> their ancestors who lived centuries ago are the same cultural cohorts,<br />
connected by the nexus of past loss <strong>and</strong> present grief. Collective memories of the trauma encoded by<br />
<strong>Aboriginal</strong> people centuries ago have been stored in cultural memory repositories (stories, narratives<br />
<strong>and</strong> myths that also serve as memory cues) <strong>and</strong>, today, are being retrieved <strong>and</strong> reclaimed.<br />
The process of traumatic memory transmission may be even better understood by employing st<strong>and</strong>ard<br />
psychological terms. According to Tulving (1985), there are three types of information stored in longterm<br />
memory. The first relates to specific events in one’s life <strong>and</strong> functions as a sort of autobiographical<br />
reserve. This type of memory is called episodic memory. A second type of information stored in the<br />
long-term memory is concerned with general knowledge <strong>and</strong> is referred to as semantic memory. Along<br />
with episodic <strong>and</strong> semantic memory, there is also a separate information system called procedural memory<br />
that involves the formation <strong>and</strong> retention of habits.<br />
Tulving (1983) also proposed that events retrieved from episodic memory are recalled with much greater<br />
conviction than semantic memory items. In this study’s proposed model, once the traumatic memories<br />
became encoded in the episodic memory of <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people, they became deeply embedded in the<br />
social psyche of <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people because of elaborate rehearsal. <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people were exposed to<br />
unrelenting waves of trauma (colonialism, settlement, displacement, starvation, fur trade, economic<br />
disorganization, religious persecution <strong>and</strong>, eventually, residential schools) <strong>and</strong> they had no time to stop<br />
<strong>and</strong> deal with what was happening to them. Centuries of destruction facilitated this elaborate rehearsal<br />
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