Historical Trauma (Native Americans)

Historical trauma response is an intergenerationally transmitted cluster of trauma symptoms experienced by members of an ethnic group or community whose [Page 231]history includes severe and cataclysmic trauma, such as genocide. Symptoms of historical trauma response may include depression, anxiety, anger, low self-esteem, emotional numbing, substance abuse, suicidal ideation or suicide, and other self-harming behaviors. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, a seminal originator of the theory, has defined historical trauma as the cumulative and pervasive “emotional wounding” of survivors of mass group trauma, occurring over the course of their lives and across generations. The construct of historical trauma was first articulated (largely by psychoanalytic thinkers) during case studies of children of Holocaust survivors, who exhibited trauma symptoms even though they had not lived through the Holocaust themselves.

The historical trauma model appears to fit the experiences of Native Americans, who have undergone nearly 400 years of catastrophic trauma: warfare, massacres, ethnic cleansing, epidemic disease, forced relocation, forced acculturation, boarding school abuse, and other genocidal consequences of European colonization. During the mid-1990s, historical trauma emerged as an explanatory framework for the high rates of suicide, family violence, psychophysiological disease, substance abuse, and other psychiatric disorders among Native Americans. As these conditions proved resistant to traditional psychological treatment, Native American and community psychologists formed a grassroots movement to conceptualize, identify, and use the historical trauma model in strengthening the mental health of indigenous peoples of North America.

Historical grief is an ancillary of historical trauma and refers to an unresolved, dysfunctional grieving of historical losses that interferes with an individual's well-being. Historical grief has also been explored among Native peoples, as the traumas to which they have been subjected have incurred multiple, catastrophic losses: loss of land, loss of sovereignty, loss of language, loss of cultural identity, loss of religion and spirituality, loss of extended family and social structure, loss of traditional livelihood and ways of life, and loss of trust in European Americans, who represent the dominant culture.