The Perpetual Influence of Historical Trauma: A Broad Look at Indigenous Families and Communities in Areas Now Called the United States and Canada

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the perpetual influence and impacts of historical trauma within Indigenous families and communities who now live in areas called the United States and Canada. Indigenous Peoples (to include American Indians, Alaska Natives, and First Nations Peoples) continue to experience health inequities which stem in part from violent and systemic geographical dislocations and separations from ancestral and traditional homelands. My contribution to this special issue constitutes a node of comparison and contrast to the other narratives gathered here. Indigenous Peoples in North America persist amid an enduring legacy of settler-colonialism that includes 90% dispossession and loss of lands, and an average forced migration distance of 239 km from homelands to reservations Rarely is this uprootedness told in parallel with other experiences of forced displacement like those which unfolded during the Second World War and the Holocaust, the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s or the contemporary conditions fueled by Russia's war against Ukraine. On one hand, this is an oversight as we have much to learn from each other about the realities of uprooting and, especially, the long-term consequences of it. At the same time, comparisons of experiences with trauma are complex and perhaps inappropriate without attention to the magnitude, underlying motives of, and duration of traumatic events endured. In short, the decades-long research on HT in Indigenous communities offers important lessons about the lingering consequences of uprootedness from place, space, and culture and efforts to support healing that can benefit other displaced communities worldwide.