Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing The Aboriginal Healing Foundation Research Series © 2004 Aboriginal Healing Foundation Published by: Aboriginal Healing Foundation 75 Albert Street, Suite 801, Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5E7 Phone: (613) 237-4441 Toll-free: (888) 725-8886 Fax: (613) 237-4442 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ahf.ca Design & Production: Aboriginal Healing Foundation Printed by: Anishinabe Printing (Kitigan-Zibi) ISBN 0-9733976-9-1 Unauthorized use of the name “Aboriginal Healing Foundation” and of the Foundation’s logo is prohibited. Non-commercial reproduction of this document is, however, encouraged. Ce document est aussi disponible en français. Table of Contents Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing Prepared for The Aboriginal Healing Foundation by Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux, Ph.D. Magdalena Smolewski, Ph.D. This project was funded by the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF) but the views expressed in this report are the personal views of the author(s). 2004 Table of Contents Table of Contents Definitions---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i Executive Summary --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iii Introduction ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 The Scope of the Study ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5 Historical Background --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------11 European Arrival in the Americas------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 And The People Were Dancing --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 A Legacy of Death and Suffering ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Death is Always Death ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 Analyzing the Trauma ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------29 Early Period: Cultural Transition – Physical Area of Impact ------------------------------------------ 29 Early Period: Cultural Transition – Economic Area of Impact --------------------------------------- 33 Middle Period: Cultural Transition – Cultural Area of Impact --------------------------------------- 37 Middle Period: Cultural Dispossession – Social Area of Impact-------------------------------------- 43 Late Period: Cultural Oppression – Psychological Area of Impact ----------------------------------- 48 The Known and the Unknown Genocide --------------------------------------------------------------- 55 A New Model: Historic Trauma Transmission (HTT) -------------------------------------------------65 Learned Helplessness --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 66 Internal Versus External Locus of Control -------------------------------------------------------------- 66 Modes of Transmission ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 71 Implications for Healing: Recovery of Awareness ------------------------------------------------------ 77 The Elders Speak---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------85 Appendix 1: Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ---------------------------------------------------- 95 References--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 97 Table of Contents Definitions This glossary of terms has been provided as a way of ensuring clarity throughout the document. Please read through these definitions and refer to them as needed. Aboriginal people or Aboriginal - includes Métis, Inuit and First Nations, regardless of where they live in Canada and regardless of whether they are “registered” under the Indian Act of Canada. Aetiology - cause, origin; all of the causes of a disease or abnormal condition. Altruism - unselfish regard for, or devotion to, the welfare of others. Asperity – rigor; severity; hardship. Assimilation - the social process of absorbing one cultural group into another. Binary - something made of or based on two things or parts. Bubonic plague - a severe and often fatal disease caused by infection with the bacterium Yersinia pestis (formerly Pasteurella pestis), transmitted to man by the bite of fleas, themselves usually infected by biting infected rodents. Colonial subjugation - the establishment of settlements in populated foreign lands through social control by domination or by overcoming or subduing by force, whether physical or moral. Colonization - the establishment of settlements. Contagions - contagious diseases. Deleterious - harmful, often in a subtle or unexpected way. Eidetic - of visual imagery of almost photographic accuracy. Egalitarian - favoring social equality: “a classless society.” Endemic - anything resembling a disease. Ethnographic - relating to the study and recording of human cultures. Execrable - of very poor quality or condition. Extirpate - to destroy completely; wipe out. Hegemonic - preponderant influence or authority over others: domination. Lakota Takini Network Inc. - a native non-profit collective of traditionalists, helping professionals and service providers and is recognized for its research in historic trauma. i Definitions Linear causality - relating to the relationship between a cause and its effect. Micro-genesis - the sequence of events that are assumed to occur in the period between the presentation of a stimulus and the formation of a response or thought to this stimulus. Ontogenesis - evolution of the tribe. Ontology - a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being. Pandemic - an epidemic that is geographically widespread. Pathogens - any disease-producing agent (especially a virus or bacterium or other micro-organism). Primeval - relating to the early ages, as of the world or human history. Propagated - to cause to spread out and affect a greater number or greater area. Proselytization - recruiting or converting to a new faith, institution or cause. Psychogenic - mental or emotional rather than physiological in origin. Renaissance – a movement or period of vigorous artistic and intellectual activity; rebirth; revival. Residential Schools - the Residential School system in Canada, attended by Aboriginal students. It may include industrial schools, boarding schools, homes for students, hostels, billets, residential schools, residential schools with a majority of day students or a combination of any of the above. Theodicies - defenses of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil. ii Executive Summary This study proposes a model to describe the intergenerational transmission of historic trauma and examines the implications for healing in a contemporary Aboriginal context. The purpose of the study was to develop a comprehensive historical framework of Aboriginal trauma, beginning with contact in 1492 through to the 1950s, with a primary focus on the period immediately after contact. Aboriginal people have experienced unremitting trauma and post-traumatic effects (see Appendix 1) since Europeans reached the New World and unleashed a series of contagions among the Indigenous population. These contagions burned across the entire continent from the southern to northern hemispheres over a four hundred year timeframe, killing up to 90 per cent of the continental Indigenous population and rendering Indigenous people physically, spiritually, emotionally and psychically traumatized by deep and unresolved grief. Following the work of Judith Herman (1997), Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence, from domestic abuse to political terror, a new model is being introduced for trauma transmission and healing, citing the presence of complex or endemic post-traumatic stress disorder in Aboriginal culture, which originated as a direct result of historic trauma transmission (HTT). A variety of disciplines, including history, anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, sociology and political science, are called upon to illuminate the model of historic trauma transmission and provide different perspectives and information on how historic trauma can be understood as a valid source of continuing dis-ease and reactivity to historical and social forces in Aboriginal communities. Purposeful universalization of the Indigenous people’s historic experience is proposed as a means to explain the basis for the creation of a nucleus of unresolved grief that has continued to affect successive generations of Indigenous people. The process of the universalization of trauma is purposefully placed in direct opposition to the particularization of Aboriginal cultural and social suffering. The stage for this theory is set with a comprehensive review of the historical records of the diseases, violence and de-population of the Americas during influenza and smallpox epidemics in 1493 to 1520, which also triggered successive epidemics until at least the nineteenth century. This section of the study addresses the early contact years and the subsequent demographic breakdown that eventually touched the Indigenous population across the continent. An estimated 90 to 95 per cent of the Indigenous population died within two generations of contact in 1492. The section of the study that addresses the epidemics is considered