Inter-generational Trauma

I don't know if any of this might also pertain to African Americans in the States, but I grew up in Northern Canada, among Cree people. Many of them had problems with alcohol, broken homes, depression, etc. No one talked about "intergenerational trauma" back in the '70s and '80s or the effects of residential schools. I've only started to hear about that in the last 10-15 years or so. But it makes sense to me. Generations of children were taken from their parents and brought up in institutions designed to strip their language and culture from them, turn them in to "Europeanized", good, Christian "Indians" whereupon they were returned to their communities - where they were lost because they did not know how to live out on the land, did not know the ways of their people anymore, did not have the proper means to support themselves because a European education was worthless in a community that didn't have European style jobs. Their people were hunter-gatherers, not store clerks or butchers or enterprisers. Some of them worked for the Hudson Bay Company, but back in the earlier part of the 20th century, other than the HBC, there just weren't a lot of places you could go to work at. Their European education didn't help them much and made them feel even more isolated from their people. Add to that, the fact that children learn important things from parents, like how to be a parent themselves later on in life, how to show affection, how to stay together, how to have a mature relationship, and these children hadn't had that, because they'd barely been around their parents. Two generations of children not growing up with their parents, two generations of children not knowing who they were (basically being told that who they were was bad, that "White" is better) was enough to create a seriously dysfunctional society.

This wasn't everyone's experience of residential schools by the way. At least one school refused to teach the children in Engish, preferring to teach them in Cree. The Oblate fathers and brothers, back in the day, all learned and spoke fluent Cree, as did the sisters who were there. My brother tells the story of one elderly Cree lady, who attended Steven Harper's official Apology to those who had gone to residential schools, and she had to have it translated because she SPOKE NO ENGLISH. When it was over, she was actually upset, because they had spoken only of the bad things, and not of the good things.

I know of others for whom the schools were mostly not a bad experience. But for many, it was. Enough that by the time I was going to school, the effects of intergenerational trauma were everywhere. At school, there were constant putdowns and constant jeering. You would be jeered at if you were proud of any accomplishment. You would be put in your place if a teacher singled you out for praise. I was jeered at simply for smiling because it was my turn to ring the bell to signal the end of recess. I remember one teacher grew tired of all the constant put-downs she kept hearing and stopped all work and made us write one nice thing about everyone else which she then posted on the wall. Sadly, while it was nice to see compliments, it didn't do much to quell the constant negativity. It was a toxic environment. I learned at a young age to never show pride in anything I did, to never show weakness, never cry, never look sad or too happy. At the end of the school year, teachers would hand out awards, and one after one, my peers and I would march up to receive them, awkwardly, trying to make it look like we didn't care. In high school, boys especially, purposely did not do as well as they could so that they would not receive awards. When I was in high school, sometimes if it was your birthday, your friends might add birthday wishes to the morning announcements. Someone did that for me once, and people used that occasion to tell me to "take a break on my birthday" and go away, they didn't want me around, participating in certain activities. Even today, if you single me out for attention it makes me feel very uncomfortable. If I don't smile and look happy, people will think that I don't appreciate anything, but it still makes me extremely uncomfortable to do so. I don't like job interviews, because those require self-promotion, and we didn't do self-promotion growing up. THAT is inter-generational trauma. It affected me, despite the fact that I grew up in a loving home, and both my parents are "white." That was just one facet. Other children I grew up with weren't as lucky. Some of them lived with alcoholic or abusive parents as well. The abuse didn't have to be physical, sometimes it was just negligence. Often it was emotional. Sometimes it was just the absence of affection. The number of suicides in my community and other Indigenous communities are much higher than anywhere else in Canada. If I hadn't had the parents I had, nor the sense that someday, I could get out of there, I might have been tempted by suicide myself.

Now that people have dug deeper and put a finger on the problem, many healing programs have started up. There are land-based healing programs, where you go out on the land and learn the old ways. There are other programs as well, where you are taught to take responsibility for your own healing, to dig down and bring up those things that hurt you, to understand them, and to realize that other people have their issues as well, but you can only change you. Still others have brought back old traditions, have gathered up the old teachings from elders who still remember them, and are teaching them again. They are bringing back the cultural symbols, the legends and stories that told people how to live good lives and make the right decisions. Most of the old legends had some kind of moral teaching in them. I have listened to stories told by my peers, of how people (even those close to them) hurt them deeply, and of how they have let go of that, how they acknowledge that those people have their own healing to do which allows them to heal and become stronger.

I write this because while I don't really know the situation of Black people in the US, I can imagine that, while the details of the story may be different, the results might be the same. I imagine that Black people are living with their own inter-generational trauma and that for this reason, there might be more social dysfunction. (single-parent homes, broken families, crime, etc.) Maybe I am totally off. But maybe looking at that trauma and calling it what it is might be a start to some healing. Maybe it is already being done? I don't know, because I have never heard the words "inter-generational trauma" used while referring to African Americans. If "white" people also recognized the trauma for what it was and supported the healing that might help with reconciliation?