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6.17: Cultural Trauma and Historical Legacy

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    324885
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    The contemporary social issues facing many Native communities—including poverty, health disparities, and substance abuse—cannot be understood outside the context of historical trauma. This concept describes the cumulative, intergenerational psychological and emotional wounding that results from a history of mass cataclysms like genocide, forced relocation (e.g., the Trail of Tears), and the boarding school era, where children were forcibly removed from their families to be culturally “assimilated” (Brave Heart and DeBruyn 1998).

    These policies aimed explicitly at the destruction of Indigenous cultures by banning languages, ceremonies, and traditional governance structures. The trauma from this cultural genocide is passed down through generations, manifesting in contemporary social pathologies (Evans-Campbell 2008). Understanding this historical context is essential for any meaningful sociological analysis of present-day Indigenous life.


    6.17: Cultural Trauma and Historical Legacy is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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