The aboriginal tragedy and the plague of untreated trauma
This week a 32-year-old aboriginal man on parole allegedly went on a stabbing rampage in Saskatchewan that killed 11 people and wounded 17. He died days later in police custody of self-inflicted injuries. This awful story illustrates how untreated trauma, caused by generational abuse and violence, lurks behind much of the world’s misery, from violent crimes to addiction, mistreatment of others and wars. It also illustrates the ongoing suffering of Native Americans and African Americans.
Intergenerational trauma is the transmission through families of the terrible effects of historical events, such as conquest, slavery, serfdom, exploitation, incarceration, holocaust or war.
Untreated, it can result in alcohol and substance abuse, broken relationships, destroyed families, domestic violence, child abuse, sexual abuse and violence or criminality. Aboriginals in Canada – as well as in the United States and Australia – have been victims on a mass scale because they were impoverished, defeated and traumatized by colonization and incarceration for generations.
African Americans suffer too as a result of slavery, abuse and racism over hundreds of years. In each case, individual or communal, the only “cure” is recognition and recovery through major psychological or social interventions.
The aboriginal Canadian man accused of murdering 11 innocent people in Saskatchewan is a case in point. Myles Sanderson was 32 and had been in trouble since he was 12. He never finished school and had been convicted of 59 crimes, including drunk driving, drug possession, assault, robbery and domestic abuse. Court records show that his childhood was characterized by neglect in homes where violence and substance abuse were normalized. He was diagnosed early on with post-traumatic stress disorder and at a recent parole board hearing said that regular use of drugs and hard alcohol would make him “lose (his) mind” and get angry. He was freed anyway, an unforgivable lapse on the part of authorities.
Canada, the U.S. and Australia each have sizeable aboriginal populations with chronic problems due to untreated mass traumatization. No amount of financial assistance makes a dent, only enlightened leadership helps.
Naturally, the overall statistics, in terms of human suffering, are depressingly high in all three countries. Each country destroyed tribal cultures, confiscated tribal lands (some returned or shared decades later), but, worst of all, placed generations of aboriginal children into residential homes, run by governments and churches, in an attempt to “assimilate” them into mainstream society.
Instead, many of the children were abused and permanently isolated from their families, traditional communities, languages and way of life. And when released, many felt rejected by white societies and often by their own communities.
“You store trauma if you don’t deal with it,” explains Catherine Twinn, a friend of mine and a lawyer from Alberta who has been an aboriginal activist, worked in government and continues to advocate on behalf of aboriginal causes. She served for several years in the Province of Alberta as a cabinet minister working on behalf of child welfare in the province. She said the experience was frustrating because the underlying problems are neither understood or dealt with by the communities or by governments.
“The majority of the populations on many reserves have FASD [Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders from exposure to alcohol before birth],” she continued. “These cause physical problems or problems with behavior and learning. Often a person with FASD has a mix of these problems. White people don’t talk about this — they don’t want to be accused of perpetuating negative stereotypes or of being racists.”
The aboriginal tragedy in all three countries is swept aside even though the statistics are shocking. Canada has only 1.67 million aboriginals (First Nations and Inuit) or roughly 4 percent of its population of 38.6 million. But aboriginals represent 32 percent of the male federal prison population and 48 percent of the female prison population. Despite considerable concern and fiscal support in Canada for aboriginals, one in four lives in poverty, and 40 percent of Canada’s indigenous children live in poverty.
The United States is no better. There are 2.64 million Native Americans. That’s less than 1 percent of a population of 329.5 million. But aboriginals represent 2.1 percent of all federally incarcerated people. A 2022 article in Quartz stated: “Nationally, American Indians are incarcerated at a rate 38 percent higher than the U.S. average for all groups, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. In 19 states, they are overrepresented in the prison population more than any other ethnic group.”
Australia has a similar problem. There are 798,400 aboriginals out of its population of 25.79 million, or 3 percent. And yet, 27 percent of those in prison are aboriginal. Comparing Canada with Australia, The Guardian quoted Canadian expert Jonathan Rudin, head of Aboriginal Legal Services of Canada: “Aboriginal peoples in Canada were grappling with record numbers of their children being placed in the child welfare system and a huge over-representation in the criminal justice system, but these are the same issues that faced Australia. …The reason it’s the same story is English settler colonialism works the same way, which is that you find a place with an indigenous population and then you destroy them as a people.”
Native residential schools in Canada and the U.S. were founded on the motto, “kill the Indian to save the man.” The U.S. Department of the Interior in 2021 issued a report that the federal government between 1819 and 1969 operated more than 400 schools in 37 states, and then-territories of Alaska and Hawaii.
In Australia, an estimated 10,500 children were forcibly removed and placed on missions to be trained as domestic servants between the late 1800s and the 1970s. In Canada, roughly 150,000 were placed in residential schools up until 1996. “Now we don’t have residential schools,” Rudin said. “What we have is child welfare, and when you graduate from child welfare, we have jails.”
Some individuals and communities have made “the recovery journey,” but the problem remains widespread and destroys the cultural and socio-economic systems within these aboriginal groups.
This week’s slaughter in Saskatchewan is another result of this dysfunction. Said Twinn: “Pain is passed down from generation to generation until someone is brave enough to feel it. I don’t think the general public is well informed on trauma and intergenerational trauma. This is not only about aboriginals. The King of Jordan used to host an international conference on trans-generational trauma in recognition of the fact that the Middle East population is a traumatized population. The same applies to Russia, where there are high rates of addiction of 40 percent of so. Russia is like a big reserve.”
Tragically, untreated trauma plagues humanity and exists everywhere.
Diane Francis is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington at its Eurasia Center. She is editor at large at National Post in Canada, a columnist with Kyiv Post, author of 10 books and specializes in geopolitics, white-collar crime, technology and business. She writes a newsletter about America twice weekly on Substack.
Source: TEST FEED1
