Intergenerational Trauma and Healing

A special issue of Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 July 2020) | Viewed by 51989

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Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Native American Studies, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA
Interests: native environmental policy; native activism for site protection; intergenerational trauma and healing; rural environmental justice; indigenous analysis of climate change; Afro-indigeneity; qualitative GIS

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Guest Editor
Department of Ethnic Studies, Woodland Community College, Woodland, CA 95776, USA
Interests: racial formations; subjugated knowledge; cultural citizenship; foodways and food justice education; Chicana/o indigeneity; intergenerational truma and healing; practices of community-based leadership

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Guest Editor
Tribal Liaison, Sierra College
Interests: youth empowerment; indigenous Hip Hop; language revitalization; community activism and resilience; film and media

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Genealogy invites essays on the topic, “Intergenerational Trauma and Healing”. We invite contributors to examine the ways in which traumas (individual or group, and affecting humans and non-humans) that occurred in past generations reverberate into the present, and how individuals, communities, and nations respond to and address those traumas. We also invite exploration of contemporary traumas, how they reflect ancestral traumas, and how they are being addressed through drawing on both contemporary and ancestral healing approaches. We define trauma broadly, including removal from homelands, ecocide, genocide, sexual or gendered violence, institutionalized and direct racism, incarceration, and exploitation, and across a wide range of spatial (home to nation) and temporal (intergenerational/ ancestral and contemporary) scales. We also approach healing in an expansive mode, including specific individual healing practices, community-based initiatives, class-action lawsuits, group-wide reparations, health interventions, cultural approaches, and transformative legal or policy decisions. We invite scholars from across disciplines (including ethnic studies, genetics, political science, law, environmental policy, public health, humanities, etc.) to consider trauma and its ramifications alongside diverse mechanisms of healing and/or rearticulating self, community, and nation.

Some potential areas of focus may include the following, although other submissions are welcome and encouraged:

  • Trauma caused by the following factors, as it reverberates physically, spiritually, and emotionally through, across, between, and within generations:
    • Removal from land
    • Contamination or destruction of homelands/ waters
    • Cultural oppression (outlawed language, religion, clothing, practices, spirituality)
    • Sexual, gendered, or domestic violence
    • Incarceration
    • Immigration and uncertain legal status
    • Economic, political, or sexual exploitation
    • Institutionalized and daily racism
    • Genocide of one’s ethnic, gender, or racial group
    • Epistemic violence
  • Mechanisms of healing from intergenerational trauma, including but not limited to:
    • Political (reparations, representation, systemic change)
    • Community-based initiatives, practices
    • Expression (artistic, linguistic, other)
    • Documentation and education
    • Legal (i.e., reversing legal decisions, establishing new legal precedent)
    • Spiritual
    • Emotional
    • Physical

Dr. Beth Rose Middleton
Dr. Melissa Moreno
Dr. Melissa Leal
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Intergenerational Trauma
  • Healing
  • Revitalization
  • Community-based
  • Nation-building
  • Institutionalized racism
  • Recovery

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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14 pages, 265 KiB  
Article
Indigenous Reflections on Identity, Trauma, and Healing: Navigating Belonging and Power
by Luis Urrieta
Genealogy 2019, 3(2), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3020026 - 25 May 2019
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 8531
Abstract
Indigenous people are survivors of what some scholars have called the nexus of bio–psycho–social–cultural–spiritual intergenerational trauma. The effects of these multi-plex traumas brought on by European colonialism(s) reverberate into the present and affect Indigenous peoples at various scales, from local interpersonal relations to [...] Read more.
Indigenous people are survivors of what some scholars have called the nexus of bio–psycho–social–cultural–spiritual intergenerational trauma. The effects of these multi-plex traumas brought on by European colonialism(s) reverberate into the present and affect Indigenous peoples at various scales, from local interpersonal relations to larger macro scales of geo-regional displacement. Indigenous peoples, however, have also survived the traumas of displacement, genocide, racism, surveillance, and incarceration by sustaining systems of ancestral and contemporary healing practices that contribute to individual and collective survivance. In this essay, I explore intergenerational rememberings of Indigenous identity, trauma, and healing based on personal, family, and community memory. Through rememberings, I seek to deconstruct the Western constructs of identity and trauma, arguing that these conceptions create trappings based on the exclusions of membership that support power hierarchies that perpetuate the dehumanization of Native peoples. By exposing these trappings, I will engage in my own decolonizing healing process by reclaiming, reconnecting, rewriting and rerighting histories. Finally, through an I/We Indigenous philosophy of belonging, I will argue that emotion can be an important saber (knowing) to help understand Indigenous identities as connected, collective, and ancestral ways of knowing and being that re/humanize Indigenous collective relational understandings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intergenerational Trauma and Healing)
10 pages, 232 KiB  
Article
The Wisdom of and Science behind Indigenous Cultural Practices
by Rose Borunda and Amy Murray
Genealogy 2019, 3(1), 6; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3010006 - 23 Jan 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 8268
Abstract
Conquest and colonization have systematically disrupted the processes by which Indigenous communities of the Americas transmit cultural knowledge and practices from one generation to the next. Even today, the extended arm of conquest and colonization that sustain oppression and culturicide continue to inflict [...] Read more.
Conquest and colonization have systematically disrupted the processes by which Indigenous communities of the Americas transmit cultural knowledge and practices from one generation to the next. Even today, the extended arm of conquest and colonization that sustain oppression and culturicide continue to inflict trauma upon Indigenous people. Yet, current scientific research now attests to how Indigenous cultural practices promote healing and well-being within physical as well as mental health domains. This examination addresses Indigenous cultural practices related to storytelling, music, and dance. In drawing from evidence-based research, the case is made for not only restoring these practices where they have been disrupted for Indigenous people but that they have value for all people. The authors recommend reintroducing their use as a means to promote physical, spiritual, and mental well-being while recognizing that these practices originated from and exist for Indigenous people. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intergenerational Trauma and Healing)
11 pages, 206 KiB  
Article
Collective Trauma and Mystic Dreams in Zabuzhko’s “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets”
by Mariia Lenherr
Genealogy 2019, 3(1), 4; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3010004 - 11 Jan 2019
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3387
Abstract
The 20th century of human history was overshadowed by the horrifying events of world wars and totalitarian regimes, with their traumatic experiences becoming the very focus of today’s modern globalized society. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is one of the ways of dealing with this overwhelmingly [...] Read more.
The 20th century of human history was overshadowed by the horrifying events of world wars and totalitarian regimes, with their traumatic experiences becoming the very focus of today’s modern globalized society. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is one of the ways of dealing with this overwhelmingly violent phenomenon. This article will discuss an historical traumatic event through literature, using psychoanalytic theories of trauma. The problem is discussed on the level of the actual theoretical landscape including the relation between transgenerational transmitted trauma, collective trauma, and cumulative trauma inscribed in a “foundation matrix” (Foulkes). As a clinical vignette, the novel “Museum of Abandoned Secrets” by modern Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko is used. The author addresses the functions of dreams, scrutinizing the psychodynamics of the novel using concepts of projective identification, mourning, the need for repair, and epigenetic and fractal theory. It is suggested that the novel facilitates the characters’ journey through trauma and its integration by the large groups (of readers). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intergenerational Trauma and Healing)
18 pages, 237 KiB  
Article
Transgenerational Transmission of Holocaust Trauma and Its Expressions in Literature
by Bina Nir
Genealogy 2018, 2(4), 49; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy2040049 - 19 Nov 2018
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 22113
Abstract
Trauma is a central concept in the historiography of the Holocaust. In both the historiographical and the psychoanalytical research on the subject, the Holocaust is perceived not as a finite event that took place in the past, but as one that continues to [...] Read more.
Trauma is a central concept in the historiography of the Holocaust. In both the historiographical and the psychoanalytical research on the subject, the Holocaust is perceived not as a finite event that took place in the past, but as one that continues to exist and to affect the families of survivors and the Jewish people. In the 1950s–1960s, evidence began emerging that Holocaust trauma was not limited to the survivors themselves, but was passed on to the next generation born after the Holocaust and raised in its shadow. It is possible to see the effects of growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust and transgenerational transmission of trauma in many aspects of the second-generation children’s lives. In this article, I examine the representations of these symptoms in David Grossman’s novel See Under: Love, which deals with the subject of the Holocaust through the perspective of Momik, a child of Holocaust survivors. Grossman teaches us that writing itself has the potential to heal. He also shows us that every one of us contains both victim and aggressor, and that, under certain circumstances, the “Nazi beast” may awaken within each of us. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intergenerational Trauma and Healing)

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5 pages, 173 KiB  
Essay
Fighting Law Enforcement Brutality While Living with Trauma in a World of Impunity
by Roberto Rodriguez
Genealogy 2018, 2(4), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy2040056 - 15 Dec 2018
Viewed by 4248
Abstract
By all rights, I should be dead. Not once, but a number of times. On 23 March 1979, as a 24-year-old, I witnessed and photographed the brutal beating of a young man in a sarape by some 10–12 Sheriff’s deputies on Whittier Blvd [...] Read more.
By all rights, I should be dead. Not once, but a number of times. On 23 March 1979, as a 24-year-old, I witnessed and photographed the brutal beating of a young man in a sarape by some 10–12 Sheriff’s deputies on Whittier Blvd in East Los Angeles. In turn, the deputies turned on me with their riot sticks cracked my skull, and sent me to the hospital, charging me with attempting to kill 4 of the deputies. On my arrest report, it stated that I was the leader of a gang of 10–15 Mexicans. With active death threats from the original Sheriff’s deputies that drove me to the jail ward of the LA County Hospital, I was subsequently arrested/detained some 60 additional times, primarily by Sheriff’s deputies and LAPD officers. By the end of the year, the criminal charges were dropped and 6 years after that, I emerged victorious in a lawsuit. That was a generation ago. No. That was at least two generations ago. I healed long ago from PTSD, though the brutality I witnessed and lived continues to reside within me, intergenerationally. This defies explanation. I am healed, yet the trauma continues to live within my body, even some 40 years after the fact. My life thereafter has been dedicated to the elimination not only of this brutality, but also a trauma that I can literally trace to 1492 on this continent through my studies on this topic. How do the Red-Black-Brown communities of this nation heal when that brutality and that memory have always been present intergenerationally and are not going away anytime soon? I want to explore the tension between fighting for the elimination of law enforcement abuse and living with that intergenerational trauma. The subtext of [anti-indigenous] racial profiling as used against Mexicans in this society, from police to immigration agents to the media, will be examined in this first-person article. How the survivors of this brutality and their families, who have lost loved ones and who fight against this brutality live with these traumas—particularly with the knowledge that as a result of impunity, there is no end in sight to this brutality—will also be examined. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intergenerational Trauma and Healing)
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3 pages, 133 KiB  
Essay
Why the Armenian Genocide Lives in Me
by Barbara Erysian
Genealogy 2018, 2(4), 50; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy2040050 - 21 Nov 2018
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3132
Abstract
Little has been taught about the Armenian Genocide of 1915 when approximately 1.5 million Armenians were brutally slaughtered. Moreover, the events are still being denied today. Community College Math Professor Barbara Erysian, an unlikely candidate to tell the story, carries the memories and [...] Read more.
Little has been taught about the Armenian Genocide of 1915 when approximately 1.5 million Armenians were brutally slaughtered. Moreover, the events are still being denied today. Community College Math Professor Barbara Erysian, an unlikely candidate to tell the story, carries the memories and sorrow of her people. She has dedicated herself to telling the story of how her grandmother survived the genocide. The story, repeatedly told to her as a child, is very much a part of her identity. Her essay describes some of the terrors of 1915. She believes the memory and pain of the Armenian Genocide must be told so that these crimes are never forgotten. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intergenerational Trauma and Healing)
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