Historical And Intergenerational Trauma Case Study

2979 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Impacts of European settlement on indigenous people

Introduction Background With the birth of America came the genocide, domination, culturecide, ecocide, separation, termination, racism, stereotyping, marginalization, and forced assimilation for the original Native Indian people of the United States, which resulted in historical and intergenerational trauma. The cultures and lifeworld views of American Indians and the White race (predominate American race), are contrastive, divergent and often conflict. The consensus view of the arriving colonists to America (a land already inhabited by Native Indians) was the belief that English (whites) and Indians shared the same vulnerabilities to health and well-being. That perspective influenced American laws and policies from which many health disparities arose for American Indians. Another additional factor which explains health disparities for American Indians is the forced transition from the Native Indian affluence to the way of the civilized life of their white conquerors. Historical and intergenerational trauma includes physical trauma, emotional trauma, and is compounded with psychological trauma, which crosses over from individuals to communities and across generations. American Indian and Alaskan Native1 (AI/ANs) people in the United States, either identified as Native alone …show more content…

Understanding on both the client and practitioner is key in building a relationship which will lead to positive client outcomes. An essential element of the assessment process is the client’ understanding are differences in word meanings. There can be major differences in Native languages and English. Take for example the word Jesus Christ. In Sauk language, there is no word for Jesus Christ. Due to differences in meanings or lack of meaning, a practitioner must gain competence in the area of the Native language of the client to foster the clients’ full understanding of what is being

Show More
Related

  • Beyond 1492-Native Reactions to Invasion

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author starts the chapter by briefly introducing the source in which this chapter is based. He makes the introduction about the essay he wrote for the conference given in at Vanderbilt University. This essay is based about the events and problems both Native Americans and Europeans had to encounter and lived since the discovery of America.

    Read More

  • Diction Good Hair

    957 Words  | 2 Pages

    suffering the Native Americans are plagued with as a result of the lack of acceptance towards

    Read More

  • Talking Back to Civilization

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    American Indians shaped their critique of modern America through their exposure to and experience with “civilized,” non-Indian American people. Because these Euro-Americans considered traditional Indian lifestyle savage, they sought to assimilate the Indians into their civilized culture. With the increase in industrialization, transportation systems, and the desire for valuable resources (such as coal, gold, etc.) on Indian-occupied land, modern Americans had an excuse for “the advancement of the human race” (9). Euro-Americans moved Indians onto reservations, controlled their education and practice of religion, depleted their land, and erased many of their freedoms. The national result of this “conquest of Indian communities” was a steady decrease of Indian populations and drastic increase in non-Indian populations during the nineteenth century (9). It is natural that many American Indians felt fearful that their culture and people were slowly vanishing. Modern America to American Indians meant the destruction of their cultural pride and demise of their way of life.

    Read More

  • Similarities And Differences Between European Native American And African Societies

    1627 Words  | 4 Pages

    The European influences to the Native Americans were Europeans carried the new diseases to the Indians. “Europeans were used to these diseases, but Indian people had no resistance to them. Sometimes the illnesses spread through direct contact with colonists. Other times, they were transmitted as Indians traded with one another. The result of this contact with European germs was horrible. Sometimes whole villages perished in a short time” (Kincheloe). Slave trade was another influence to American Indians. Europeans soon realized that they could provide commercial goods such as tools and weapons to some American Indian tribes that would bring them other Indians captured in tribal wars, and these captured Indians were bought and sold as slaves. Therefore, “slavery led to warfare among tribes and too much hardship. Many tribes had to move to escape the slave trade, which destroyed some tribes completely. In time, the practice of enslaving Native peoples ended. However, it had greatly affected American Indians of the South and the Southwest” (Kinchloe). Lastly, Europeans change Native America and African’ roots. Native Americans

    Read More

  • Native Americans and Cultural Assimilation

    1945 Words  | 4 Pages

    Native Americans have had a long history of resistance to the social and cultural assimilation into white culture. By employing various creative strategies, Native Americans have attempted to cope with the changes stemming from the European colonial movement into the Americas. There are fundamental differences in world views and cultural and social orders between Indians and Europeans, which contributed to conservatism in Native American cultures. In this paper, two aspects of such cultural and institutional differences of Native American societies will be examined: holistic Native American beliefs versus dualistic world views and harmony versus domination. These two aspects are important in terms of explaining changes (or lack thereof) in Native American societies because they suggest that the Native American world view is more cyclical and its components are interlinked, while Western societies have a clear demarcation between cultural elements, such as religion, kinship, and morality. However, there are certain limitations to the theoretical frameworks that explain conservatism in Indian cultures because these theories are oriented around the Western world view and were developed based on the Western terms; therefore, indigenous population was not taken into account when these theories were developed.

    Read More

  • American Indians: Health Disparities Research

    1153 Words  | 3 Pages

    American Indians have had health disparities as result of unmet needs and historical traumatic experiences that have lasted over 500 hundred years.1(p99) Since first contact American Indians have been exposed to infectious disease and death2(p19), more importantly, a legacy of genocide, legislated forcible removal, reservation, termination, allotment, and assimilation3. This catastrophic history had led to generational historical traumas and contributes to the worst health in the United States.2 American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) represent 0.9 percent of the United States population4(p3) or 1.9 million AI/AN of 566 federally recognized tribes/nations.5 American Indians/Alaska Natives have significantly higher mortality rates of intentional and unintentional injuries, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease and chronic lower respiratory disease than other American.6

    Read More

  • Historical Trauma On The Native American Community

    1171 Words  | 3 Pages

    Brave Heart clarifies, “when we talk about historical trauma I am referring to the theory that lifespan trauma is passed down generation to generation” (2011). Brave Heart illustrates that any trauma that is passed down generation to generation is historical trauma and therefore the trauma will continue, unless some interferes to stop the trauma affecting the next generation. The trauma that came out of the boarding schools is the trauma that was caused by Native American children being taken from their loving homes and placed into institutions that all they did was to take every cultural connection they had to their home and forced them to learn the American culture and the language. If that was not enough what the Native American children went through in the boarding schools when they came home was worst. This children felt like they did not belong because they had learn some of the American culture and at the same time they lost their own culture. As a result of the changes it made it hard for them to go back to the way it was before the went to boarding school. Brave Heart mensions, “ boarding school attendance affected entire family systems; individuals and family relationships; family, community and cultural attachments; and interpersonal communication” (2011:287). Brave Heart enlightens us that the damage of boarding schools caused Native American children to feel disconnected to their own community. Many of the children in boarding schools do not know how a family should be or how they should behave with their parents and loved ones. In addition, to the family relationships these children lack parenting skills that are thought throw them see how their parent treat them and their siblings, but for someone who was at a boarding school for the majority of their childhood they did not learn this skills. Brave Heart emphasis “ clinical

    Read More

  • Sexual Assault of Native American Women

    1464 Words  | 3 Pages

    Native Americans have undergone a horrific past of genocide, discrimination, forced acculturation, miscommunication, and misunderstanding. They were frequently dehumanized and stripped of basic human rights. Treated as “savages” they were herded into areas of confinement and robbed of their language, culture, and way of life. In many instances of genocide, experts have noted a type of historical trauma that may be passed down through families, known as generational trauma. While the potential effects of this concept are not proven, the stories, images, and memories of thousands of Native Americans continue to be shared with their children, thus perpetuating, and never forgetting the pain and embarrassment that their people have experienced.

    Read More

  • The Effects of Colonization on the Native Americans

    537 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Effects of Colonization on the Native Americans Native Americans had inherited the land now called America and eventually their lives were destroyed due to European colonization. When the Europeans arrived and settled, they changed the Native American way of life for the worse. These changes were caused by a number of factors including disease, loss of land, attempts to export religion, and laws, which violated Native American culture. Native Americans never came in contact with diseases that developed in the Old World because they were separated from Asia, Africa, and Europe when ocean levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age. Diseases like smallpox, measles, pneumonia, influenza, and malaria were unknown to the Native Americans until the Europeans brought these diseases over time to them.

    Read More

  • Native Americans and Mental Health

    2885 Words  | 6 Pages

    Many people believe that Native Americans are a disadvantaged group of individuals in many ways. Culturally, in that many of the cultures of the various tribes across the Americas were taken from them by Europeans and their descendants. Socially, in that they are unlike other minorities in the United States because of their extra-constitutional status; and even medically, stemming from the general belief that Natives are at a higher risk for disease than other ethnicities due to tobacco and alcohol use, especially when used together (Falk, Hiller-Sturmhöfel, & Yi, 2006).

    Read More

  • A Brief History of Racism in America

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    Native Americans in particular were abused by white people in the States. From the 16th century and on, European nations rushed into the “New World,” claiming terrain that Native Americans had lived on for hundreds of years. Treaties were repeatedly made with the United States government and Native American ethnic groups. These treaties generally brutally kicked the “Indians” out of their land and pushed them farther and farther west. The Indian Removal act of 1830 encompassed more than five tribes and pressing all of them out of the southern United States. While some Natives fought back, many were forced to comply in order to save themselves from the Americans’ wrath. Eventually the white people themselves went so far west that there was no longer anywhere to put the Native Americans. In order to deal with this conundrum, the American army forced most tribes to abide on reservations in hopes that they would gradually become civilized and assimilate to the American culture. These reservations were often iniquitous and atrocious places. It was almost unfeasible for the Indians to hunt the w...

    Read More

  • On "The Red Convertible"

    488 Words  | 1 Pages

    into the Native American way of life and some of the hardships that can befall the victims

    Read More

  • Intergenerational Trauma Essay

    1045 Words  | 3 Pages

    When faced with a life altering situation although Molly’s characteristics and personality aid her in courageously defying them, the effects of facing this traumatic event will lead to long term psychological repercussions. When severe harm is inflicted on a person’s psyche, it is viewed as an emotional trauma (Levers, 2012). The emotional harm inflicted on Molly’s psyche originates from different dimensions; like her upbringing, her trauma is multidimensional too. As a child of the Indigenous community, whose ancestors and elders were killed violently in inter-group conflicts, and whose children were forcefully removed from families, Molly is would experience intergenerational trauma (Atkinson, 2002). Intergenerational trauma is trauma passed down from one generation to another; as a close knitted community group, the grief experienced by family members of losing their loved ones, would have been transferred across generations (Atkinson,

    Read More

  • The Native Americans' Lack of Materialism

    610 Words  | 2 Pages

    People have been living in America for countless years, even before Europeans had discovered and populated it. These people, named Native Americans or American Indians, have a unique and singular culture and lifestyle unlike any other. Native Americans were divided into several groups or tribes. Each one tribe developed an own language, housing, clothing, and other cultural aspects. As we take a look into their society’s customs we can learn additional information about the lives of these indigenous people of the United States.

    Read More

  • The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven Analysis

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    Native-Americans make up one of the smallest portions of our population, but are still victims of mass incarceration and police brutality Many Native-American reservations have high unemployment rates. Poverty in these areas is also common. Reserved, sacred land for Native-Americans is also disappearing as more and more land is being taken away by United States government. The government also disobeys treaty rights by exploiting their land for natural resources to gain profit. Low graduation rates are common in Native school districts. Suicide is much more prevalent among Native-American youth when compared to the rest of the nation. They also generally receive poor healthcare. Violence and abuse of children and women is more common in Native-American communities as well.

    Read More

More about Historical And Intergenerational Trauma Case Study

Open Document