Historical Trauma:

In my experience, understanding the idea of historical trauma has allowed me to better understand how mental illness and mental health struggles have developed over time to affect different people’s lives. Like Weaver, it has helped me understand “how trauma experienced by past generations may have a lingering impact,” and continuation upon new generations (Weaver, P.12). 

One concept that I have been studying for a while now to better understand how it impacts my life is Historical Trauma. Historical Trauma can sometimes be difficult to understand because it is passed down through generations, which means that many people affected by it did not directly experience the trauma. As a Native woman, I live in a world where colonization, capitalism, assimilation, and patriarchy affect the way I navigate life. For this website, it has taken me a long time to figure out how to explain concepts related to trauma because I envision the audience who I am speaking to will be my family, friends, peers, mentors, community members, fellow Indigenous folks, and those who are wanting to help themselves heal and grow. My understanding of historical trauma is best explained by Hilary Weaver in her book, Trauma and Resilience in the Lives of Contemporary Native Americans: Reclaiming our Balance, Restoring our Wellbeing. Weaver (2019) states that historical trauma “is defined as cumulative emotional and psychological wounding across generations, including the lifespan, which emanates from massive group trauma.” (Weaver, 2019: 8). For me, this means that we need to understand today’s trauma, struggles, and challenges for Native people date back to widespread settler-colonial genocide, the violence and assimilation of boarding schools, and the displacement wrought by a variety of policies aimed at dispossessing Native land, like the Dawes Act.  

These are periods in time when harm was inflicted on a massive group of people which has had lasting effects, particularly regarding the many social issues and health challenges Native people face today. For example, our Native elders who have experienced the horrors of boarding school have the lasting effect of not always knowing how to communicate their feelings because it was seen as shameful when one cried, laughed, or expressed excitement under assimilation policies. This specific action of not being able to express their human emotions was very common in boarding school, which became something that was instilled in the very bodies of our elders. The action of not being able to communicate their needs and emotions to their family and community members has, for some, resulted in a lack of empathy from those we need it from the most. Due to this lack of connection with close family members, our communities have suffered from a decreased sense of belonging, making it difficult for people to understand and seek support for mental health issues they may face.   

Intergenerational Trauma: 

Like Historical Trauma, intergenerational trauma is “the effects of and responses to traumatic events (which) can become ‘transmitted’ across generations” (Leal, et al, P.30). The difference between historical trauma and intergenerational trauma can sometimes be confusing to distinguish because historical trauma is intergenerational trauma. The main difference is that historical trauma is specific to a cultural group that has a history of being systematically oppressed. (https://www.acf.hhs.gov/trauma-toolkit/trauma-concept). Intergenerational Trauma is not specific to a group of people therefore, the recurrence of this trauma that gets passed down is because of an occurrence of traumatic events at the interpersonal level, which can happen to anyone.