Mapping the healing journey : the final report of a First Nation research project on healing in Canadian Aboriginal communities

Summary: For hundreds of years (in some cases as many as three hundred years), Canadian Aboriginal communities experienced wave after wave of debilitating shocks and traumas that left whole nations of people reeling and broken. These shock waves came in many forms: disease, destruction of traditional economies through the expropriation of lands and resources, undermining of traditional identity, spirituality, language and culture, destruction of indigenous forms of governance, community organization and cohesion, breakdown of healthy patterns of individual, family and community life. It becomes clear when considering these various sources of trauma, that the eventual impact of trauma originating from outside Aboriginal communities was to generate a wide range of dysfunctional and hurtful behaviors (such as physical and sexual abuse) which then began to be recycled, generation after generation inside communities. What this has meant is that as many as three to five generations removed from externally induced trauma, the great great grandchildren of those who were originally traumatized by past historical events are now being traumatized by patterns that continue to be recycled in the families and communities of today. The result of all of this trauma is a wide range of personal and social dysfunction.