Human history is a tapestry woven with threads of triumphs and tribulations. This intricate tapestry stretches across generations, leaving a lasting imprint on individuals, families, and communities. Historical trauma, shaped by the painful legacies of colonization, chattel slavery/ enslavement, war, displacement, genocide, and systemic oppression, casts a long shadow that continues to influence the living stories of our communities.
In this article we aim to bring a taste of one of the tools that can be utilized in a decolonized approach to care: healing informed writing.
The below excerpt is a rewritten passage from an unpublished report by the Wisconsin Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives Taskforce. While this report has not yet been published, the below piece was written and submitted to the taskforce to demonstrate the powerful impact of healing informed writing. This passage allows readers to understand a highly generalized Indigenous history to serve as a base to begin a more complex look at the systemic loss of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives faced by our communities.
“During the long healing process, I fell back on what elders call ‘a Cherokee approach’ to life – to think positively, to take what is handed out and turn it into a better path.”
Wilma Mankiller (2019)
There are over 574 federally recognized tribes (United States of America Government, 2022) with differing languages, traditions, healing ways, and wisdoms. These ways of knowing predate the colonization of Turtle Island over 525 years ago. The resilience from Indigenous communities comes from generations of grandmothers, sisters, mothers, aunties, daughters, and cousins who nurtured and cared for their communities and protected the sacred alongside our two-spirit relatives, boys, and men. In many of our Indigenous languages the word "illness" does not exist but there were many different words to describe antidotes and medicines that made us whole and well. Having a strength based, culturally rooted, and collective approach to caring for our communities and kin is not a new way of being. It is time immemorial of the generational practices of calling back, observing, and honoring our elders stories of our past, embodying the teachings of our ancestors Post Traumatic Wisdoms (Perry, 2021), and listening to our families and communities who continuously inform us what healing and health and social justice is.
Pre-colonization, Indigenous societies showed great reverence for women; focused on spirituality and one’s relationship with the world; and protected each other. Values of collectivism, interconnectedness, humility, and peace were paramount. At the heart of culture is the sense of community belonging and reciprocity. The power of knowing that you matter and belong to your community cannot be underestimated. Relational and cultural health is a protective factor. Our relatives of all ages must know that if they were missing or murdered that there would be a massive public wide search, campaigns shared on social media and news outlets, and that their families would have the full support of law enforcement on their side. Culture has sustained our communities through unmeasurable and unimaginable times and will continue to be the medicine for our healing needs. However, there is a chronic and intentional invisibility by Western societies and the Global North* that dismisses and overlooks the collateral damage and moral injury ensued onto our Indigenous communities from generations of MMIW/R. These transgenerational traumas and unforgiving losses are experienced on an individual, familial, and community levels as Historical Trauma Unresolved Grief (HTUG) (Yellow Horse Brave Heart, 1998).
Footnotes
*The countries, located primarily in the northern hemisphere, that have historically been identified as “the West” or “first world” due to perceptions of their relative wealth, technology, and global dominance. (Graml, Meyer-Lee, & Peifer, 2021)
Citations
Graml, G., Meyer-Lee, E., & Peifer, J. S. (2021). People-Centered Approaches Toward the Internationalization of Higher Education. IGI Global Publisher of Timely Knowledge, 16.
Perry, D. B. (2021, April 24). Dr. Bruce Perry on How to Transform Pain Into Power. (Oprah, Interviewer) OWN TV.
Rappaport, D. (2019). Wilma's Way Home: the Life of Wilma Mankiller. Los Angeles, New York: Disney Hyperion.
United States of America Government. (2022, January 7). Federally Recognized Indian Tribes and Resources for Native Americans. Retrieved from USA Gov: https://www.usa.gov/tribes
Yellow Horse Brave Heart, D. M. (1998). Historical Trauma Unresolved Grief Model.
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