Extreme and traumatic events can change a person — and often, years later, even affect their children. Researchers have now unmasked a piece in the puzzle of how the inheritance of traumas may be mediated. The phenomenon has long been known in psychology: traumatic experiences can induce behavioural disorders that are passed down from one […]
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is something we are now accustomed to attributing to the effects of war. We used to call it “shell shock.” Today we know that trauma is not only experienced individually, but shared through generations as well. Researchers have known for awhile that trauma experienced by mothers during pregnancy can affect children […]
American Indians experience massive losses of lives, land, and culture from European contact and colonization resulting in a long legacy of chronic trauma and unresolved grief across generations. This phenomenon, labeled as historical unresolved grief, contributes to the current social pathology of high rates of suicide, homicide, domestic violence, child abuse, alcoholism and other social […]
This case report describes historical trauma on a rural American Indian Reservation and outlines participatory action approaches for nurses. The prevalence of historical trauma often goes unnoticed by healthcare professionals because of its multifaceted nature and subsequent lack of provider understanding. Nurses accustomed to looking only for physical and psychosocial signs of trauma may not […]
“In those days the Indian schools were like jails and run along military lines, with roll calls four times a day. We had to stand at attention, or march in step. The B.I.A. thought that the best way to teach us was to stop us from being Indians. The Government teachers were all third-grade teachers. They […]
At its sixth session, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues recommended that an expert undertake a comparative study on the subject of boarding schools.1 This report provides a preliminary analysis of boarding school policies directed at indigenous peoples globally. Because of the diversity of indigenous peoples and the nation-states in which they are […]
This article discusses how, from the late 1800s through the early 1970s, the American government removed American Indian children from their parents and placed them in government-run boarding schools as part of the plan to decimate American Indians as a distinct people. It discusses the schools’ inhumane living conditions as well as the abuse suffered […]
Many former students identify the most painful legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools as the loss of First Nations culture and language resulting from cultural denigration, religious indoctrination, and the removal of children from their families. The federal government insists that no cause of action exists for loss of culture or language arising from the […]
This article considers, from the experience of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement, the limitations of the current formal justice system and the common ways that lawyers and parties act within it. Looking at the combinations of lawsuits, settlement negotiations, structured compensation schemes, truth and reconciliation processes, and memorial and education programs now provided for in […]
The recent flood of civil litigation suits filed against the federal government and four major Christian churches by former students of Canadian Native residential schools threatens to overwhelm the court system and bankrupt several of the Church organizations involved. Litigation has proved problematic as a mechanism through which to respond to the abuse and other […]
