What Does My Upbringing Have To Do With It?

Current Problems With Historical Roots

Ask how their family history has influenced their current challenges and struggles and I’m certain that Canadian native could clarify the connection. It is quite likely we would hear how historical violence, aggression and neglectful treatment (criminal victimization really), suffered by earlier generations of First Nations people, has contributed to their ongoing cry for justice today.  Successful efforts to vilify, degrade and relocate/isolate our First Nations peoples has had quite an overwhelming detrimental impact on their health and wellness.

In one article on residential schools in Canada we find the following example;

In the early 1990s, beginning with Phil Fontaine, (then Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs), Survivors began speaking publicly about abuse experienced in residential schools including:

• sexual abuse;
• beatings;
• punishments for speaking Aboriginal languages;
• forced eating of rotten food;
• widespread hunger and thirst;
• bondage and confinement; and
• forced labour.

Students were forbidden to speak their language or practice their culture, and were often punished for doing so. Other experiences reported from Survivors of residential schools include mental abuse, severe punishments, overcrowding, use of students in medical experiments, illness and disease, and in some cases death. Generations of Aboriginal people today have memories of trauma, neglect, shame, and poverty. Those traumatized their experiences in the residential school have suffered pervasive loss: loss of identity, loss of family, loss of language, loss of culture.

(Legacy of Hope Foundation site found @ http://www.legacyofhope.ca/about-residential-schools/conditions-mistreatment)

Does any of this sound familiar: sexual or physical abuse, psychological maltreatment, poverty, confinement and neglect of basic human needs? Family of origin experiences definitively shape our belief systems, how we see ourselves, those around us, how we respond to authority and how we view the world in which we find ourselves. Recovery from such awful atrocities, horrendous histories and abuse may seem impossible; however, the reality is often healing, recovery, restoration and even excelling becomes a reality with the right supports and resources.