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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Executive Summary<br />
This study proposes a model to describe the intergenerational transmission of historic trauma <strong>and</strong><br />
examines the implications for healing in a contemporary <strong>Aboriginal</strong> context. The purpose of the study<br />
was to develop a comprehensive historical framework of <strong>Aboriginal</strong> trauma, beginning with contact in<br />
1492 through to the 1950s, with a primary focus on the period immediately after contact. <strong>Aboriginal</strong><br />
people have experienced unremitting trauma <strong>and</strong> post-traumatic effects (see Appendix 1) since Europeans<br />
reached the New World <strong>and</strong> unleashed a series of contagions among the Indigenous population. These<br />
contagions burned across the entire continent from the southern to northern hemispheres over a four<br />
hundred year timeframe, killing up to 90 per cent of the continental Indigenous population <strong>and</strong> rendering<br />
Indigenous people physically, spiritually, emotionally <strong>and</strong> psychically traumatized by deep <strong>and</strong> unresolved<br />
grief.<br />
Following the work of Judith Herman (1997), <strong>Trauma</strong> <strong>and</strong> Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, from<br />
domestic abuse to political terror, a new model is being introduced for trauma transmission <strong>and</strong> healing,<br />
citing the presence of complex or endemic post-traumatic stress disorder in <strong>Aboriginal</strong> culture, which<br />
originated as a direct result of historic trauma transmission (HTT). A variety of disciplines, including<br />
history, anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, sociology <strong>and</strong> political science, are called upon to illuminate<br />
the model of historic trauma transmission <strong>and</strong> provide different perspectives <strong>and</strong> information on how<br />
historic trauma can be understood as a valid source of continuing dis-ease <strong>and</strong> reactivity to historical<br />
<strong>and</strong> social forces in <strong>Aboriginal</strong> communities.<br />
Purposeful universalization of the Indigenous people’s historic experience is proposed as a means to<br />
explain the basis for the creation of a nucleus of unresolved grief that has continued to affect successive<br />
generations of Indigenous people. The process of the universalization of trauma is purposefully placed<br />
in direct opposition to the particularization of <strong>Aboriginal</strong> cultural <strong>and</strong> social suffering.<br />
The stage for this theory is set with a comprehensive review of the historical records of the diseases,<br />
violence <strong>and</strong> de-population of the Americas during influenza <strong>and</strong> smallpox epidemics in 1493 to 1520,<br />
which also triggered successive epidemics until at least the nineteenth century. This section of the study<br />
addresses the early contact years <strong>and</strong> the subsequent demographic breakdown that eventually touched<br />
the Indigenous population across the continent. An estimated 90 to 95 per cent of the Indigenous<br />
population died within two generations of contact in 1492. The section of the study that addresses the<br />
epidemics is considered a critical component of the entire dialogue. It is set as the point of departure for<br />
the cumulative waves of trauma <strong>and</strong> grief that have not been resolved within the <strong>Aboriginal</strong> psyche <strong>and</strong><br />
have become deeply embedded in the collective memory of <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people.<br />
This study is broken down into five areas of impact: physical, economic, cultural, social <strong>and</strong> psychological.<br />
These areas of impact are then organized chronologically, according to the waves of colonization: cultural<br />
transition (early period), cultural dispossession (middle period) <strong>and</strong> cultural oppression (late period).<br />
Examples are provided as evidence of the genocidal nature of what befell Indigenous people in the<br />
Americas. Familiar stories of genocide from Australian, Polish <strong>and</strong> Tasmanian experiences illustrate the<br />
similarity in the characteristics of genocide in the Americas.<br />
The following sections analyze a variety of healing models <strong>and</strong> First Nations’ therapeutic interventions<br />
aimed at healing <strong>Aboriginal</strong> communities through facilitating specific aspects of <strong>Aboriginal</strong> knowledge<br />
<strong>and</strong> traditional values, such as: balance, inter-connectedness, intra-connectedness <strong>and</strong> transcendence.<br />
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