Historical Trauma On The Native American Community

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Historical trauma has brought psychological effects on the Native American community. Many suffer from alcohol and drug abuse, depression, and poverty. I wondered why they do not get help from the government and after watching the documentary California’s “Lost” Tribes I began to understand that in any reservation the tribe is the government, so they do not have the same rights as a city outside the reservation. Many of the the reservations were placed in areas where they could not do any form of agriculture, so they did not have a source of income. Many of this reservations have to find ways to get themselves out of poverty and many of the reservations within California have found a way to get out of their poverty by creating casinos …show more content…

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

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