American Indian Historical Trauma: Community Perspectives from Two Great Plains Medicine Men

• Published in: American journal of community psychology Vol. 54; no. 3-4; pp. 274 - 288
• Main Authors: Hartmann, William E., Gone, Joseph P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01-12-2014; Blackwell Science Ltd
• Subjects: American Indians; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Clinical Psychology; Community and Environmental Psychology; Folk medicine; Health Psychology; Health Status Disparities; Historical trauma; Humans; Indians, North American - psychology; Male; Mental Health; Mental health disparities; Nation-building; Native culture; Native North Americans; Original Article; Personality and Social Psychology; Psychological Theory; Psychology; Public Health; Qualitative Research; Social Change; Social Identification; Social Problems; Social Theory; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - ethnology; Traditional healing; Trauma; American Indians; Traditional healing; Historical trauma; Nation-building; Mental health disparities
• ISSN: 0091-0562; 1573-2770
• DOI: 10.1007/s10464-014-9671-1

The field of community psychology has long been interested in the relations between how community problems are defined, what interventions are developed in response, and to what degree power is distributed as a result. Tensions around these issues have come to the fore in debates over the influence of
historical trauma
(HT) in American Indian (AI) communities. After interviewing the two most influential medicine men on a Great Plains reservation to investigate how these tensions were being resolved, we found that both respondents were engaging with their own unique elaboration of HT theory. The first, George, engaged in a therapeutic discourse that reconfigured HT as a recognizable but malleable term that could help to communicate his “spiritual perspective” on distress and the need for
healing
in the reservation community. The second, Henry, engaged in a nation-building discourse that shifted attention away from past colonial military violence toward ongoing systemic oppression and the need for
sociostructural change
. These two interviews located HT at the heart of important tensions between globalization and indigeneity while opening the door for constructive but critical reflection within AI communities, as well as dialogue with allied social scientists, to consider how emerging discourses surrounding behavioral health disparities might be helpful for promoting healing and/or sociostructural change.