Transcript of Intergenerational Trauma in First Nations Communities
Impacts
Forced loss of culture and language and traditional values
Normalization of violence in Indigenous communities, including physical and sexual abuse
Difficulty forming healthy relationships
Lack of parenting skills
Loss or self-respect/respect for others
Assimilation & Abuse; Intergenerational Trauma in Indigenous Communities
Rebekah Elkerton
Intergenerational Trauma
Residential Schools
Truth and Reconciliation
Recommendations for Healing and Nation Building in First Nations Communities
Miigwetch
Thank you
A continuous passing on of unresolved and deep-seated emotions, such as grief and chronic sadness, to successive descendants.

Intergenerational or multi-generational trauma happens when the effects of trauma are not resolved in one generation. When trauma is ignored and there is no support for dealing with it, the trauma will be passed from one generation to the next.

(Aboriginal Healing Foundation)

Adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Pass a federal law establishing aboriginal education standards to ensure children going to school on reserves have access to the same resources as those outside their communities;
Establish mechanisms to narrow the health-care gap between Aboriginal Peoples and other Canadians, including building aboriginal healing practices into the health-care system and spending more on aboriginal healing centres;

Assimilation
&
Abuse
Over 130 residential schools were established across the country, with the last school closing in 1996.

More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children were placed in these schools often against their parents’ wishes.
“These residential schools were
created for the purpose of separating Aboriginal children from their families,
in order to minimize and weaken family ties and cultural linkages, and to indoctrinate
children into a new culture—the culture of the legally dominant Euro-Christian
Canadian society.”

(The Truth and Reconciliation Commision of Canada)
52% of all Indigenous children live in extreme poverty
80-90% of Indigenous mothers in Winnipeg, Regina, and Saskatoon live below the poverty line
53% of children on social workers case loads in Canada are Indigenous
40% of Indigenous inmates in prison are Residential School Survivors
91% of Indigenous women in Canadian prisons today are survivors of sexual or physical abuse (The Native Women’s Association of Canada)
Statistics for Reflection