McGoldrick Chapter 3, Part 1

What is it like to be an Indian in today's society?

• "I live in shame and feel oppressed.  I want to raise my fist in anger, but I don't know who to be angry at."
• "I learned from a young age that I was different.  My school teachers looked down on me, looked at me with pity.  And none of us Natives ever talked about it.
• "Now as an adult I don't try very much, I've given in and I see looks of pity and disgust on my bosses face.  I drink, I gamble, I wonder about suicide."
• The government has made lots of promises, but nothing as ever come to fruition.
• All they've found is depression, oppression, anxiety, drugs, alcohol.
• They have to acknowledge their losses in order to be able to move on.

Documenting our historical loss and the dynamics of unresolved grief

• Just like in Schindler's List, the cry is to remember, remember the past and the traumatic history.
• Historical Trauma: the impact and social transmission of one generation's trauma to subsequent generations.  There is still UNRESOLVED GRIEF.
• Unresolved Grief has symptoms: migraines, stomachaches, joint pain, dizziness, and chronic fatigue, chronic illness, Type II diabetes, depression, substance abuse, preoccupation with death, suicidal ideation, chronic delayed or impaired grief, psychic numbing, survivor guilt.....
• Unresolved grief and trauma are endemic of reservations and among urban Indian populations.
• Only in the last two decades have historians started to detail the oppression and racism.  

Life Before Contact Between Native America and European Cultures

• Before contact with the Europeans, the North American were complete.  They had education, community.  Each group had their own language and certain knowledge skills to be learned: 1. cultural heritage, 2. spiritual/religious practices, 3. economic survival skills.  That's how the kids were raised and educated.  

Life After Contact Between Native Americans and Europeans

• The Europeans came and they are immigrants, interlopers, and usurpers, but most history books don't call them that.
• There was constant pressure on Native Americans to give up their land and to conform to European customs.
• With all the pressure to conform and the loss of their lands, they lost their educational systems
• By the 1800s, Europeans had taken over, pushing further and further West.  And the Native Americans were decimated, by 1850 only 250,000 Native Americans were left.