Background
Oppressed communities share common health indicators: shorter lifespans; higher incidence of death from violence; poor health indicators; and high incidence of alcoholism, substance abuse, and suicide. Additionally, they share indicators of cultural dispossession: loss of language speakers; alienation from the land; social disruption; loss of significant cultural markers and inability to access resources that once defined their communities. Often, sectors of these communities evidence high levels of criminal justice involvement. Community healers see these as evidence that massive group trauma has left a tenacious, inherited imprint, communities that are engaged in decolonizing practices are actively addressing the effects of group trauma through cultural healing traditions.
Jewish social workers traced evidence of inherited trauma in second and third generation descendants of holocaust survivors. In the early 1980’s, these findings were recognized as evidence of generational historical trauma and unresolved grief. This construct resonated with Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart (Lakota) who is a social worker, associate professor and mental health expert. In 1992, she founded the Takini Network, an organization dedicated to advancing healing from genocide in Native communities in the United States.
For Indigenous communities, trauma has its roots in the 15th century colonial expansion undertaken by Christian European nations. The frameworks of oppression and racism developed during the “Age of Discovery” remain enshrined in the constitutions and legal framework of all modern nation states. Thus, historical trauma has its roots in colonization and is cumulative since the complex framework of structural oppression is distinctly layered in each generation.
There is a deep need to unpack the structural foundation of oppression, the resultant cumulative harm and initiate community healing processes. Without explicit and decolonized practices focused on shifting this foundation that is still, whole cloth, embedded in the laws of nation states world wide[1], all of our good work resembles, “a house of cards that must be rebuilt every generation.”[2]
Resiliency Theory and Strength-based Approach
Indigenous peoples are often defined by the problems they confront. The list is real and terrifying and includes high infant mortality rates, the shortest life expectancy; highest likelihood of cancer, suicide, violent assault, addiction, and incarceration; and poor health indicators including diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.
Most proposals lead with a problem statement but deficit-based thinking deepens social and health disparities. In contrast, a January 2017 Canadian Study: Culture as Catalyst—Preventing the Criminalization of Indigenous Youth commission by Crime Prevention Ottawa and written by Melanie Bania, PhD, concludes that working from strengths, providing a trauma-informed support system and culturally-specific initiatives dramatically reduce the likelihood of criminal justice involvement.
A strength based approach focuses on the internal strengths and resources of a people.
One crucial factor in trauma healing was learning the history of their people from a resiliency and strength-based approach.
Purpose
The Center is both a physical space and an online resource where information about whole community healing is collected, archived and accessible. At Center gatherings, individuals and communities who are seeking to expand their understanding of healing practices and how they aid in decolonization, peace building and social change. Using the Center’s library, they can access information, study, pray, reflect and meet others who are doing similar work. Upon request, staff consults with communities as they develop self-determined healing projects and evaluations that reflect community-identified needs and markers of success. The peacebuilding communities the Center supports exemplify the possibility of community transformation from victim, to survivor to hero by documenting communities that have charted a course of healing trauma and resolving grief.
The Center collaborates with individuals, entities and communities to deepen understanding of the contemporary impact of the three papal bulls, known as the Doctrines of Discovery (DoD), written in the 15th century by the Catholic Church. The principles articulated in the DoD blessed and preserved the act of colonization. These papal bulls resulted in the “Law of Nations,” legalized slavery and forced removal of Indigenous Africans, formed the basis of the Marshall Trilogy that remains the foundation of United States (U.S.) federal Indian law, outlined the mechanisms to remove Indigenous people from their lands and underpinned the concept of Manifest Destiny.[3] This is how the Christian nations of Europe, and later the U.S., forcibly took away belief systems of Indigenous people and colonized non-Christian nations. European colonization capsized ways of life all around the world. The impacts of these losses are determinate factors in oppression today.
The Center gatherings are structured to share and understand mechanisms of healing from historic trauma caused by genocide, war, violence, oppression and poverty. Cumulatively, these gatherings will contribute to efforts that address the structure of oppression globally and within nation states. By assembling healing and peace building practices and accompanying communities to both build and document this work the Center is acting from within shared multi-cultural and ecumenical wisdom teachings about healing that chart a course of acknowledgement, apology, forgiveness, reparation and relationship.