Historical Trauma (post-colonial)

The field of community psychology has long been interested in the relations between how community problems are defined, what interventions are developed in response, and how power is distributed as a result. Tensions around these issues have come to the fore in debates over the influence of HT discourse in AI communities. After interviewing the two most influential medicine men on a Great Plains reservation to investigate how these tensions were being resolved, it was found that both were engaging with their own unique elaboration of HT theory. The first, George, engaged in a therapeutic discourse that reconfigured HT to a recognizable but
malleable term that could help to communicate his “spiritual perspective” on distress and the
need for healing in the reservation community. The second, Henry, engaged in a nation-building discourse that shifted attention away from past colonial military violence toward ongoing systemic oppression and the need for sociostructural change. These two interview analyses locate HT at the heart of important tensions between globalization and indigeneity while opening the door for constructive, but critical reflection within AI communities, as well as dialogue with allied social scientists, to consider how helpful emerging discourses around behavioral health disparities might be for promoting healing and sociostructural change.

Historical Trauma scholarship in the last decade has focused on indigenous groups, particularly in the Americas. Even a quick glance at health disparities and high suicide rates on reservations in the United States (US), and at high rates of poverty and violence of first nations people in Canada, seems to illustrate a larger problem; this problem stems from past trauma. Nevertheless, delving into the history of many marginalized groups in post-colonial societies as well as the developed world one would be hard pressed not to find a group with a historic traumatic event, one that has resulted in the transmission of the pain of that experience through numerous generations and has been maintained via oppressive structures. However, in fields of conflict resolution, trauma, justice, and development, historical trauma is a concept more often than not unknown or ignored. How can something so important be so dismissed within academia?

This paper brings historical trauma to the forefront in order to elevate voices writing about historical trauma within their communities, and to increase the visibility of a concept that must be understood if there is hope for change globally. Through section I, the authors will cite historical trauma scholars (often members of groups experiencing historical trauma themselves) to explore what historical trauma is on the theoretical level as well as the ways it manifests in the physical, mental, and emotional health of communities who experience the pain of the past in their present life. Various aspects of historical trauma will be examined, including the collective nature of historical trauma, the intergenerational transmission, and the mechanisms of transmission. In section II, the authors will explore the intensifying, problematic effects that power dynamics have on historical trauma and the groups who carry it, further justifying the elevation of the concept of historical trauma. Finally, in section III, the case will be made for group-defined collective healing practices.