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 4<br />
information in my DNA Structure. A close examination of that DNA can tell us about<br />
the migrations, the diseases, even what our diet was (as cited in Johnson <strong>and</strong> Budnick,<br />
1994:226).<br />
It is also true that one now knows more about what happened directly after contact <strong>and</strong> in the few<br />
centuries following contact. Written historical records <strong>and</strong> the events that brought <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people to<br />
where they are now, in ways that were not possible even fifty years ago, can now be addressed. One has<br />
access to historic knowledge that speaks to <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people not only from oral tradition, but also<br />
directly from the outsiders’ historic records that st<strong>and</strong> as firm testaments <strong>and</strong> stark declarations written<br />
<strong>and</strong> legitimized by the forces that brought the diseases <strong>and</strong> purposefully contributed to Indigenous<br />
suffering. From that same record, one can confirm that this utter destruction has continued to be<br />
passed down to <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people, albeit in silent, unseen <strong>and</strong> even more insidious ways. There are<br />
other aspects of historic trauma transmission that has not been addressed in-depth, although it did raise<br />
the effects of a changing diet <strong>and</strong> the introduction of life ways that do not fit what the Elders have tried<br />
to teach. Mike Haney speaks of his underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the adoption of foreign substances <strong>and</strong> beliefs,<br />
<strong>and</strong> its effects:<br />
It’s my underst<strong>and</strong>ing from our legends that the reason we have the four colours is that<br />
we were all children of God. Not four races, but one race of four different colours:<br />
white clay, red clay, black clay, <strong>and</strong> yellow clay. And we feel that all people were given<br />
original instructions from [the] Creator. Those who have gotten away from them have<br />
suffered. I’m told that in Africa, beer was <strong>and</strong> continues to be, one of the treatments<br />
given by their medicine men. But alcohol <strong>and</strong> sugar were not indigenous to this area,<br />
therefore our chemical makeup couldn’t metabolize it. Just as diseases ravaged us when<br />
they were introduced into our culture because we had no defense mechanism to fight<br />
them. The same is true with sugar <strong>and</strong> alcohol. Our metabolism was affected by it then<br />
<strong>and</strong> still, to this day, continues to be. This can be proven <strong>and</strong> documented, <strong>and</strong> it is<br />
exactly what our elders have always taught us (as cited in Johnson <strong>and</strong> Budnick,<br />
1994:225).<br />
The type of historic information that has been put forward in this study does not create the most<br />
comfortable basis from which to argue the current status of <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people in contemporary settings,<br />
because it is a story of almost total loss <strong>and</strong> destruction. Rather, it has become more acceptable to speak<br />
<strong>and</strong> write of the <strong>Aboriginal</strong> history with the ceremonies <strong>and</strong> teachings preserved <strong>and</strong> brought forward<br />
as intact. This research is an attempt to elucidate the darkest side of the most distant, written <strong>and</strong> yet<br />
forgotten past so that one can throw light on inexplicable behaviours that so determinedly oppose the<br />
beliefs <strong>and</strong> behaviours postulated by the Elders. Through returning to the period directly after contact,<br />
<strong>and</strong> exploring the collective <strong>and</strong> continental degree of sheer destruction, this study has attempted to<br />
expose the deeper rivers of grief that continue to course through the <strong>Aboriginal</strong> people’s collective<br />
consciousness. These dark waters have coursed along beneath the re-membering of ceremony, traditions<br />
<strong>and</strong> ancient beliefs for the past five hundred years. It is as if the grief cannot be detected or even seen<br />
through dreaming or visions. It is as if a dark curtain fell over that period in Indigenous history when<br />
<strong>Aboriginal</strong> people bid for psychogenic survival; however, the grief can be felt. It is suggested that those<br />
times continue to be remembered <strong>and</strong> acted out by the collective spiritual selves. This, in turn, suggests<br />
that while all was lost in a figurative sense, when death took Indigenous people by the millions so long<br />
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