Heal historical trauma: In progress.
During my time with the HHT group and project, I have learned a great deal about the culture, history, and challenges of indigenous communities in the United States, specifically the Navajo Nation which is the community chosen for our group work. Our project's initial idea was to develop an intervention that would assist the Navajo students and teachers in their educational journey which is rooted in a traumatic past, and which is where the “heal historical trauma” initiative comes in. To provide a brief context, American Indians have suffered tremendously from colonizing efforts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Native American boarding school education began in colonial times and was aimed at assimilating American Indians into Western culture. The aim of this education was to civilize and Christianize the children in order to erase the Navajo culture by separating them from their families. Many Navajo teenagers still attend boarding schools as their parents believe that it is the best education for their children. Despite the colonial efforts to assimilate Indians into the Western culture, they held onto their distinct ways of life. The reason why there is still resistance towards the American education system is that it is seen as part of the dominant culture rather than a part of the Native American culture. Moreover, many schools are built on stolen Indigenous lands. Therefore, there have been efforts to return the Indigenous children home and provide them with schooling that aligns with their cultural values and traditions. The Little Singer Community School, a tribally controlled Navajo grant school located in the Navajo Reservation, is one of them, and it grounds its teachings in the Diné (native Navajo) tradition and language; notably, all teachers in this school are Navajo. Yet, the teachers just like the children often continue to carry this historical trauma.
In our initial conversation, we brainstormed how these communities could reconnect to their cultural identity and roots. It is believed that ancestors had the knowledge of healing modalities, thus these communities hold the power over their own healing and need help to be redirected back to that indigenous wisdom. Due to the years of oppression, the Navajo people have developed a number of challenges. Their children are struggling with a variety of issues like ADHD, intergenerational attachment trauma, and substance abuse. Many have trouble at school and keeping at their studies, and experience what is often perceived from the outside as laziness, yet is likely a consequence of the historical trauma. Suicide rates are high as well. In the group, we discussed that the importance of education needs to be reintroduced in these communities as well as ways to motivate these children to go back to school. Indigenous children face more difficulties in accessing education, especially at the high school level. Children often have to commute 2 hours each way which contributes to high drop-out rates and very low college graduation rates (only about 16%). We brainstormed with the group how education could be made more accessible to these schoolchildren who often do not have internet access and need to stay on school grounds to finish their homework, which takes away from the time they could spend with their families and immersed in their culture. Additionally, Western healing methods can be harmful and limiting to indigenous communities. For example, PBI (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) frameworks that are behavior-based and discounting neurological dysregulation, are damaging for black communities, indigenous communities, and people of color. Thus, promoting indigenous healing modalities such as story-sharing and ritual is important.
Going forward, we had the idea to develop teacher training for the Navajo teachers to make education more inclusive and sensitive regarding the historical trauma aspects, specifically for the Little Singer Community School. The idea of the project further shifted towards creating a toolkit that would summarize the Navajo history, culture and challenges that could be used both for educating the wider public on this topic as well as to use it in schools for more sensitive and inclusive education purposes. In our last meeting that we had with our NGO partner, out of the three interventions we proposed, which were either 1) to help indigenous teachers heal from historical trauma, 2) to provide an information toolkit that could be used to educate the general public on Navajo and indigenous communities, and 3) a deliverable for a strengths replication for the Little Singer Community School, we collectively decided to do the latter and translate the successes of this unique educational institution into a replicable model that other schools could access and use.
Focusing on the strengths is an indigenous approach; in my opinion, it is a powerful healing tactic that helps reframe a difficult past that, while doesn't go unacknowledged, is surpassed with a hopeful and futuristic outlook. “What is right, instead of what is wrong?” is a question we aim to answer and translate into our deliverable. The Navajo community's strengths are rich and rooted in their strong culture. In the Diné tradition, human beings are inextricably connected to one another and to nature through a complex web of relationships including blood relations, clan relations, tribal relations, and relationships to all human beings and other aspects of the natural world. The community has exhibited resilience over time by adapting to new environments and contexts after being displaced from their homeland and by overcoming oppression and discrimination as a minority group in the United States. They are strong in tradition, and carry respect for the elders, their culture, and their ancestors; in Navajo culture, there is a strong elder council and multiple medicine people are still practicing. Interconnectedness and helping others are fundamental values to these communities and powerful healing tools they could utilize. These and other strengths that the Little Singer Community School also represents are what we plan to include in our deliverable.
Last but not least, I have learned a lot from and want to thank my fellow group members Nora Inigo, Sydney Segal and Dana Ergas. During times of uncertainty and minimal guidance, we managed to maintain a strong sense of community, commitment and inspired motivation in each other. The creativity and dedication this group exhibited were key to coming up with solutions and maintaining focus in such circumstances, and I am truly grateful to have been part of such an inspiring and diverse team with whom it has been a joy to share this project.
