Indigenous Topics
What is Intergenerational Trauma?
One of the lingering effects of the Residential School system is intergenerational trauma. Many researchers have discovered that Indigenous children of survivors present traumatic behaviors, like depression, severe anxiety, and PTSD, despite not physically attending residential schools. While some of these cases are explained as “learned behavior,” some cases are understood as inherited (innate) behaviors.
The New Brunswick Community Collage explains intergenerational trauma:
-
For Indigenous Peoples in Canada, intergenerational trauma has been passed on through generations. Today, it is embedded into the very fabric of some communities. Colonizers first created the harm and compounded the trauma by outlawing the Indigenous culture practices that could heal the harm done in the 1884 amendment to the Indian Act. Therefore, the impact from trauma occurs both as a result of the trauma itself and from the inability to undertake healing practices. What remained was the pain, the inability to heal and all of the accompanying impacts. Family structure, rather than being based on the kinship model where everyone had responsibility for everyone else (sisters and brothers) became based on the learned and conditioned behaviours associated with trauma.
Today, Indigenous communities have long journeys against this systemic trauma.
Understanding Intergenerational Trauma. (2021). New Brunswick Community College (NBCC). Retrieved June 2021, from https://nbcc.ca/indigenous/did-you-know/intergenerational-trauma
Use these terms to further your research:
| Generational Trauma | Historic Trauma |
| Transgenerational Trauma | Multi-Generational Trauma |
Intergenerational Trauma
Select resources from the U of C Catalogue
In My Own Moccasins by ISBN: 9780889776449Publication Date: 2019-08-24Long-listed for the 2020 RBC Taylor Prize A memoir of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the lasting wounds of sexual violence Helen Knott, a highly accomplished Indigenous woman, seems to have it all. But in her memoir, she offers a different perspective. In My Own Moccasins is an unflinching account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the wounds brought on by sexual violence. It is also the story of sisterhood, the power of ceremony, the love of family, and the possibility of redemption. With gripping moments of withdrawal, times of spiritual awareness, and historical insights going back to the signing of Treaty 8 by her great-great grandfather, Chief Bigfoot, her journey exposes the legacy of colonialism, while reclaiming her spirit.
A Mind Spread Out On The Ground by ISBN: 9780385692380Publication Date: 2019A bold and profound work by Haudenosaunee writer Alicia Elliott, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is a personal and critical meditation on trauma, legacy, oppression and racism in North America. In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight and understanding to the ongoing legacy of colonialism. What are the links between depression, colonialism and loss of language--both figurative and literal? How does white privilege operate in different contexts? How do we navigate the painful contours of mental illness in loved ones without turning them into their sickness? How does colonialism operate on the level of literary criticism? A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is Alicia Elliott's attempt to answer these questions and more.
- The biological impacts of Indigenous residential school attendance on the next generationWe investigated the biological impacts of Indigenous residential school attendance on the adult children of survivors, operationalized through allostatic load (AL); and the extent to which intergenerational trauma, operationalized through adverse childhood experience (ACE) score, mediated this association.
Chief Moon-Riley, Kat, Copeland, Jennifer L, Metz, Gerlinde A.S, & Currie, Cheryl L. (2019). The biological impacts of Indigenous residential school attendance on the next generation. SSM - Population Health, 7, 100343–100343. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2018.100343
- Hidden Burdens: a Review of Intergenerational, Historical and Complex Trauma, Implications for Indigenous FamiliesDrawing on decades of work as allies with Indigenous families and communities in Canada, the authors present a review of literature on intergenerational, historical trauma and the effects of early trauma. Included in the review are critical considerations as to whether understanding of stressed human capacity, as described by family members of various generations affected by traumatic events, may be increased through exploring the developmental implications of complex trauma. Research on brain-based effects of early trauma and work from the field of epigenetics may contribute other components to the understanding of complex, intergenerational impacts of multiple trauma contexts. Informed support for individuals and families combined with political advocacy at a systems level is critical in intergenerational trauma work in order to break historic patterns affecting family development and interactions.
O’Neill, Linda, Fraser, Tina, Kitchenham, Andrew, & McDonald, Verna. (2018). Hidden Burdens: a Review of Intergenerational, Historical and Complex Trauma, Implications for Indigenous Families. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 11(2), 173–186. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-016-0117-9
The Healing Foundation. (2018, July 26). Intergenerational Trauma Animation [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlqx8EYvRbQ.
Historica Canada. (2020, March 9). Intergenerational Trauma: Residential Schools [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWeH_SDhEYU&t=20s.