Trauma, Child Development, Healing and Resilience A Review of Literature with Focus on Indigenous Peoples and Communities Prepared by: Dr. Patti LaBoucane-Benson Dr. Nicole Sherren Dr. Deanna Yerichuk Trauma, Child Development, Healing and Resilience A Review of Literature with Focus on Aboriginal Peoples and Communities Primary Contributors Dr. Patti LaBoucane-Benson, Dr. Nicole Sherren, Dr. Deanna Yerichuk Project Sponsors Alberta Children Services, Cultural Knowledge and Innovation Branch Suggested Citation LaBoucane-Benson, P., Sherren, N., Yerichuk, D. (2017). Trauma, Child Development, Healing and Resilience: A review of literature with focus on Indigenous peoples and communities. PolicyWise for Children & Families. Edmonton, Alberta. PolicyWise for Children & Families | 1 Trauma, Child Development, Healing and Resilience A Review of Literature with Focus on Aboriginal Peoples and Communities Table of Contents Key Messages ................................................................................................................................................ 3 Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 6 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 21 Research Design and Method ..................................................................................................................... 23 Annotated Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 23 Literature Review .................................................................................................................................... 24 Interconnected Worldview ......................................................................................................................... 25 Cree Interconnected Worldview ............................................................................................................. 25 Neuroscience of Interconnectedness ..................................................................................................... 30 Colonization: Fragmentation of Relationships ........................................................................................ 32 Historic Trauma: Isolation ....................................................................................................................... 35 Toxic Stress, Neuroscience and Historic Trauma .................................................................................... 40 Healing: Reconciliation and Decolonization ........................................................................................... 42 Development of a Legal Tradition ............................................................................................................... 49 Legal Tradition in the Cree Worldview ................................................................................................... 49 Colonization: Distorted Moral and Ethical Development ....................................................................... 62 Historic Trauma: Lawlessness ................................................................................................................. 65 Healing: Decolonization and Reclaiming Wahkohtowin ......................................................................... 68 Development of Positive Individual and Collective Identity ....................................................................... 72 Cree Identity ........................................................................................................................................... 72 Colonization: Attack on the Indigenous Identity .................................................................................... 74 Historic Trauma: The Colonized Psyche .................................................................................................. 75 Healing: Decolonizing the Cree Identity ................................................................................................. 79 Self Determination ...................................................................................................................................... 84 Interconnected Foundations of Self Determination ............................................................................... 84 Colonization ............................................................................................................................................ 86 Historic Trauma: Powerlessness to Rage ................................................................................................ 90 Healing .................................................................................................................................................... 91 Recommended Training Outline ................................................................................................................. 95 Background ............................................................................................................................................. 95 Proposed Framework for a Training Module .......................................................................................... 96 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................................. 97 Annotated Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 104 PolicyWise for Children & Families | 2 Trauma, Child Development, Healing and Resilience A Review of Literature with Focus on Aboriginal Peoples and Communities Key Messages Historical trauma refers specifically to the inter-generational impact of colonization on Indigenous peoples. Every First Nation, Métis and Inuit community will have unique experiences of colonization due to significant diversity of culture, geographic location and other specific historical encounters or events. The most recent definition of historical trauma includes: colonial injury to Indigenous peoples by European settlers who ‘perpetrated’ conquest, subjugation, and dispossession; collective experience of these injuries by entire Indigenous communities whose identities, ideals, and interactions were radically altered as a consequence; cumulative effects from these injuries as the consequences of subjugation, oppression, and marginalization have ‘snowballed’ throughout ever-shifting historical sequences of adverse policies and practices by dominant settler societies; and cross-generational impacts of these injuries as legacies of risk and vulnerability were passed from ancestors to descendants in unremitting fashion until ‘healing’ interrupts these deleterious processes. First Nations in Alberta share an interconnected worldview that focuses on building, maintaining and strengthening relationships with all living things. The Healthy Spiral of Relationships model illustrates that worldview. The spiral symbolizes the interconnectedness of the people and all the beings in their world - animate, inanimate and spiritual. If this spiral was three dimensional, it would be moving to demonstrate that relationships are constantly changing and require ongoing efforts to build, maintain, renew, and strengthen them. Several colonial policies contributed to the eradication of Indigenous cultures and impaired survivors’ ability to create healthy family relationships. Those policies include the creation of residential and boarding schools, the apprehension of Indigenous children (known as the Sixties Scoop), and over-representation of Indigenous children in the child welfare system. The loss of connection and communication between children and their parents and grandparents severely damaged essential family relationships, blocking the transmission of cultural, ethical, and normative knowledge between generations. The Gradual Civilization Act, the Enfranchisement Act and The Indian Act are grounded in the colonial assumption that Indian language, culture, pedagogy, intellect, and spirituality were inferior. These three acts were created to force assimilation ostensibly for the benefit of the Indian people. Through these acts and later amendments, and residential schools, Indigenous were forced to renounce their culture, language and spirituality. Ongoing systemic racism in the current Canadian society has further affected the capacity to develop a positive individual or collective Indigenous identity. Colonization in Canada is the ongoing domination and displacement of Indigenous peoples without their consent, in an attempt to eradicate Indigenous cultural, familial, political, educational and spiritual systems and replace them with Christian European structures of power. Over time, some Indigenous people eventually accepted that by virtue of their being Indigenous, they lack the ability PolicyWise for Children & Families | 3 Trauma, Child Development, Healing and Resilience A Review of Literature with Focus on Aboriginal Peoples and Communities to solve their own problems. The development of a welfare dependency has been the result, whereby Indigenous people do not feel capable or hopeful that they can affect change in their reality. The policies of apprehending children damaged the very foundation of Indigenous social