1. Understanding Historical Trauma
“A society that cannot remember its past and honor it, is in peril of losing its spirit”
~Vine Deloria Jr.

2. Ethleen Iron Cloud- Two Dogs
Sina Ikikcu Win
(Takes the Robe Woman)
Ethleen Iron Cloud- Two Dogs
Hmuya Mani
(Walks with a Roaring)
Richard Two Dogs
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3. How did we get here?

5. What is Historical Trauma?
Historical trauma can be conceptualized as an event or set of events perpetrated on a group of people (including their environment) who share specific group identity (e.g. nationality, tribal affiliation, ethnicity, religious affiliation) with genocidal or ethnocidal intent (i.e annihilation or disruption to traditional lifeways, culture and identity.
Historical unresolved grief is the grief that accompanies the trauma.
Historical Trauma Response
“Constellation of features in reaction to this trauma”
Depression
Anxiety
Low self esteem
Anger
Substance abuse
Difficulty with emotional identification and expression

6. Historical Trauma Examples
Wounded Knee Massacre 1890
Jewish Holocaust

7. Indigenous Experience
Similarities
Holocaust
Indigenous Experience
Imprisonment
Forced Relocation
Death
Abuse
Imprisonment
Forced Relocation
Death
Abuse

8. Differences Unacknowledged
U.S. laws forbade the practice of tribal religions.
Religious ceremonies that would have addressed the trauma, allowed grief expression, and permitted healing were denied.
Length of trauma
Losses were felt across tribal nations over 500 year period
There was no end to ethnic cleansing (ongoing and legal)
No place to go
Relocated to areas with no economic value where leaving was illegal
Dependent on U.S. Government for rations
Daily reminders
Loss of land, loss of languages, spirituality, healing traditions
Highly traumatized group in present
Lower life expectancies, higher rates of violent victimization
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9. Length of the Trauma
“But if you do not [submit]…we shall take you, and your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them…and we shall take away your goods and shall do you all the harm and damage we can.” Requerimiento, read by Priests/Spanish Conquistadors, 1500s (as cited in Josephy, 1994, p. 140) “ I would withhold from [the Indian adults] rations and supplies…and when every other means was exhausted…I would send a troop of United States soldiers, not to seize them, but simply to present as an expression of the power of the government. Then I would say to these people, “Put your children in school”, and they would do it.” Indian Commissioner, Thomas Jefferson Morgan, 1889 (as cited in Josephy, 1994, p. 432) “State child custody laws, to which tribes were subject, allowed non-Indian state employees with little understanding of Indian culture to make decision about when to remove children from their families…by 1977, 25 to 35 percent of all Indian children had been taken from their homes by bureaucratic authorization.”(Jones, 1995)
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10. Individually, each event is profoundly traumatic; taken together they constitute a history of sustained cultural disruption and destruction directed at communities.
The trauma is held personally and transmitted over generations. Thus, even family members who have not directly experienced the trauma can feel the effects of the event generations later.
The resulting trauma is conceptualized as collective in that it impacts a significant portion of the community and compounding, as multiple historically traumatic events occurring over generations join an overarching legacy of assaults.

11. Confronting historical trauma
Understanding the trauma
Releasing our pain
Transcending the trauma

12. Confronting Historical Trauma
Subjugation and Reservation Period
Confined / translocated
Lack of security
Forced dependency on the Oppressor
Boarding School Period
Destroyed family system
Beatings and rape
Prohibition of Native languages and religion
Last effect: Ill prepared for parenting and identity confusion
Forced Relocation and Termination Period
Transfer to urban areas
Prohibition of religious freedom
Beginning of Contact
Life shock
Genocide
No time for grief
Colonization Period: introduction of disease and alcohol, traumatic events such as Wounded Knee Massacre
Economic Competition
Sustenance loss (physical/spiritual)
Invasion War Period
Extermination
Refugee symptoms

13. – Captain Richard H. Pratt
“Kill the Indian, Save the Man.”
– Captain Richard H. Pratt
Boarding school period ( )
1st school: Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Captain Pratt modeled Carlisle and other off-reservation boarding schools on a school he developed at Fort Marion prison in Florida from where Native prisoners of war were held.
His “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” policy proposed that children be forcibly removed from home with no return, until they were young adults.
By 1909, there were 25 off-reservation boarding schools. More than 100,000 Native children were forced to attend these schools.
Attendance was mandatory or parents would be imprisoned. (e.g. in 1895, 19 Hopi men were imprisoned at Alcatraz for refusing to send their children to the schools.

14. Lakota boys before their arrival at Carlisle
Lakota boys after their arrival at Carlisle

16. Environmental & Spiritual Trauma

17. Federal Indian Policy Westward expansion and Indian relocation
Eastern tribes forced out of homelands and put on barren lands
Justification of Indian removal by Thomas Jefferson was to “give them a space to live undisturbed by white people as they gradually adjust to civilized ways"
Allotment and Assimilation ( )
Federal policy that aimed to take from Indians, the idea of group ownership of land and parceling the reservations into small plots – mainly given to Indian males.
“Kill the Indian, Save the Man” policy
Termination and Relocation ( )
This time federal policy called to obliterate tribal existence by terminating the federal relationship with certain tribes.
Federal government initiated a policy called Relocation, that encouraged Indian people to blend into mainstream society by moving to urban areas.

18. Relocation offices were set up
in 7 major cities:
Chicago
Denver
Los Angeles
San Francisco
San Jose
St. Louis
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Dallas

19. Understanding the trauma
Response Features:
Survivor guilt
Depression and psychic numbing
Fixation to the trauma
Low self-esteem
Victim identity
Anger
Self-destructive behavior
Substance abuse
Hypervigilance
Preoccupation with death, death identity and loyalty to ancestral suffering and deceased
Internalized oppression

20. Releasing the Trauma
By allowing ourselves to feel and express the emotions and pain tied to the trauma, the healing process can then begin.
Validating the experience of people
Education increases awareness of trauma
Sharing effects of trauma provides relief
Grief resolution through collective mourning/healing creates positive group identity and commitment to community

21. Transcending the trauma
Transcending is healing and moving beyond the trauma
No longer define yourself in terms of the trauma
Survivor instead of victim
“In order to heal you must be able to forgive. We have to be able to forgive the unforgivable, which is the only way we can evolve as people, as a country, or as a species. We must learn from our past and dream of a better future for all.”
Restoring our “Original Instructions”
Relational restoration

22. “Never look for a psychological explanation unless every effort to find a cultural one has been exhausted." -Margaret Mead