Healing history? Aboriginal healing, historical trauma, and personal responsibility

Bibliographic Data

ID2394945
AuthorsJ B Waldram (0000-0001-8486-3556, University of Saskatchewan, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume51
Issue3
Pages370-386
Publication date2014-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTranscultural Psychiatry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-4615 • E-ISSN: 1461-7471
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1363461513487671
PMID23788570
OpenAlexW2102381712
LanguageEN
Citations received24
References cited18

What can an exploration of contemporary Aboriginal healing programs such as those offered in Canadian prisons and urban clinics tell us about the importance of history in understanding social and psychological pathology, and more significantly the salience of the concept of "historical trauma"? The form of Aboriginal "healing" that has emerged in recent decades to become dominant in many parts of the country is itself a reflection of historical processes and efforts to ameliorate the consequences of what is today often termed "historical trauma." In other words, contemporary notions of "healing" and the social, cultural, medical, and psychological disruption and distress caused by colonialism and captured in the term "historical trauma" have coevolved in an interdependent manner. I also argue that there is a tension between the attribution of this distress to both specific (e.g., residential schools) and generalized (e.g., colonialism) historical factors, as evident in the "historical trauma" concept, and the prevailing emphasis in many healing programs to encourage the individual to take personal responsibility for their situation and avoid attributing blame to other factors. I conclude that "historical trauma" represents an idiom of distress that captures a variety of historical and contemporary phenomena and which provides a language for expressing distress that is gaining currency, at least among scholars, and that the contemporary Aboriginal healing movement represents an effort to deal with the absence or failure of both "traditional" Aboriginal healing and government-sponsored medical and psychological services to adequately deal with this distress of colonialism

Aesthetics · Blame · Colonialism · Criminology · Distress · Historical trauma · Personal distress · Political science · Psychotherapist · Silence · Sociology · Child Abuse and Trauma · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Law · Psychology · Resilience and Mental Health · Social Psychology