Native Americans

Indigenous Healing Versus Eurocentric Helping

Over hundreds of years, many American Indians grew wary and distrustful of government interference due to historical experiences largely stemming from forced migration from sovereign homelands in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. In one well-documented event, government-sanctioned troops forcibly removed thousands of Cherokee Indian families from their homes in the middle of winter without warning and no time to gather belongings—many with just the clothes on their backs. These tribes left belongings, livestock, and family treasures, all of which were left for white looters from the Deep South ready to occupy their fertile lands. This forced removal cost Indians thousands of lives lost due to exposure, disease, and starvation along the months-long journey to government-sanctioned settlements west of the Mississippi. Along the way, children were born, and the displaced who perished were buried in makeshift graves without time for either tribe or family members to pay respects or grieve, as They were forced to keep moving toward new tribal settlements [Page 946]in Oklahoma in what has been called the Trail of Tears. Though this was the plight of the Cherokee tribe, other so-called civilized tribes also experienced similar events of forced migration and subsequent loss of lives, property, and native lands—as well as emotional trauma inflicted.

After many months up to a year of treacherous travel, as tribes settled in new lands, Westerners attempted to acculturate indigenous tribes with Western values and ways of living. American Indians strongly resisted all Western influence as interference. As a people, many American Indians, still reeling from loss of homeland and family, were dealing with deep pain and experiencing feelings of loss, grief, depression, and a sense of helplessness. Though many Westerners were sincerely pained and sympathetic to the plights of the tribes’ forced removal and subsequent mental anguish and genuinely desired to assist, their Westernized attempts at healing American Indians’ psychic pain were often in stark contrast with American Indians’ traditional ways of healing.

Native American storytelling is believed to heal through the native storyteller making peace and meaning through the revealing and telling of his or her story. Here, Dia Molnar, a Navajo woman, tells the history of the Navajo nation

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