I'm here with Dr. Suzanne Stewart who's in the Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at OISE of the University of Toronto. And Suzanne's worked on inter-generational trauma so I'd like to talk with her today about that work. Maybe you can tell us a bit about the research that you do. >> Thank you, John Paul. Maybe I'll just introduce myself a little bit so you can have a bit of a context for who I am and what I bring to the work that I do. I'm from the Yellowknife Dene First Nation, in the northwest territories. I've been living and working here in Anishinaabe and Mohawk territory in Ontario for the last, almost six years. I'm a registered psychologist and I work as a counseling and clinical psychologist in the Urban Aboriginal Community doing psychotherapy and psyche assessments with aboriginal people, many of whom have a history of street involvement. And involvement in other marginalized and at risk activities. My program of research here at OISE has centered mostly on the mental health of youth and working with mental working with youth around issues related to their strengths. And the challenges that they experience in education, in employment, and in identity. In addition to that, I've been developing a program of research around aboriginal homelessness and mental health. So working in community with organizations trying to look at what some of the strengths and resources that aboriginal homeless people have both within themselves, and are able to access within the community. >> Mm-hm. >> In addition to, to my research in mental health, I also work in administration at OISE. So, I, I, several years ago, I was appointed as Special Adviser to the OISE Dene on Aboriginal Education. And I've also worked as Chair and Co-chair of the Indigenous Education Network here at OISE, along with yourself. >> Mm-hmm. >> For the last five yars. Speaker:[laugh] That's a great intro. We've been talking about residential schooling in this course. And one of the things that we're talking about the impact that residential schooling has had, on individuals and communities, is this notion of inter-generational trauma. Can you tell us a bit about what that is and how to understand it? >> So, I think before we can meaningfully have a discussion about trauma in general, and inter-generational trauma specifically, it's helpful to clarify the context that we're discussing this in. And for me, when we start to talk about stuff like this in the aboriginal community, what we need to talk about is what is aboriginal mental health. And how is that different from Western dominant societies conception of what mental health is. In the Western health care system, mental health is usually defined by the DSM4, the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual. And that defines mental health as the state marked by the absence of disease. So, when psychologist, councilors social workers, mental health professionals, nurses, doctors work with patients or clients in a Western healthcare system, they are often approaching people's problems, such as inter-generational trauma or history of trauma. From that perspective of understanding mental health as marked by the absence or the presence of symptoms and disease. From traditional aboriginal perspectives, mental health has been defined within the discipline of psychology by aboriginal scholars. In mental health, as balance between and within the four sacred aspects of the self, the mental, the emotional, the physical, and the spiritual. Research over the last 5 to 10 years around the mental health of aboriginal people by indigenous scholars, such as myself, have further refined that definition of indigenous mental health as not only being about the balance within the person, but as also having a component to do with healing. So, mental health for aboriginal people means balance within and between the four sacred aspects of the South, but it's also about healing. And for most people in today's society, for many aboriginal communities and individuals, that healing is about healing from the trauma of residential school. So, when we talk about residential school, and we start to use words like trauma and inter-generational trauma, what we're talking bout is the negative lasting and ongoing effects of the experience of a persistently negative event over time that is passed on from one generation to the next. >> Mm-hm. >> And how that's passed on can be very obvious and salient. So, it can be in things like how people communicate with each other, how parents and children communicate. It can be how roles and responsibilities are in families. It can be how relationships develop or don't develop. It can be through functional or dysfunctional behaviors such as, you know, abuse, violence substance abuse and addiction. Self-esteem within the individual communication patterns can also translate to things like educational attainment and achievement, employment or unemployment. It has wide-reaching trauma, and inter-generational trauma has wide reaching impacts for both intrapersonal functioning. So, what goes on inside the individual in terms of their feelings, their thoughts, their perceptions, their, how they understand and express their universal human needs as well as their sense of identity and self-esteem . But, it also has an impact on the interpersonal processes of individuals within communities. That is how people relate to in relationship with other people. So, to answer the specific question of what, what does inter-generational trauma maybe look like. So, one very concrete and clear example is around parenting practices. So, when we look at some of the processes around residential school in the Canadian context, when young children are taken away from their parents and placed in an institutional environment, they are no longer the recipient of the parenting practices. That they may have received if they'd have stayed in the family home. So, as a result, if, if a child has been placed in an institution environment such as residential school and has remained there through their age of development 'till they were young adults or older adolescents. Then, when they come out of there, they will not have been able to experience the parenting practices that they would have experienced through living in their family home. And when they become parents themselves, they will not have learned in the way that they would have been able to learn if they had been in the home with their parents and their extended family. >> Mm-hm. >> So it's just one ex, one concrete example. >> Right. You know, there's a notion that's out there. And sometimes, people express it this way. And they say, why can't aboriginal people get over the residential school thing? That's so in the past, that, that happened so long ago. You know, how do you respond to something like that? >> So, so they're making judgement or expressing opinions such as the one that you just expressed. Why can't poeple get over it? It's in the past. So, the last residential school closed in the early 90's. There's varying dates and information about that. But, if the last residential school would have closed in the late 90's, that means that there's people of my age and your age, and younger than us, who went to school. So for, to residential school, so for example I'm the oldest of 6 children, 3 of my younger siblings who are now in their early thirtie, went to residential school. So that's this generation right now. The current generation of, sort of late adulthood, middle to late adulthood people, and our children, our children who may be young. So, if we went to residential school, let's say for example, you and I. That would have a direct impact on the parenting practices of our children today, in this generation, who are going to school right now in, in the place in which we live. >> Mm-hm. >> That would have a direct impact on how we relate to our parents, to our siblings, to our partners, to the people that we're in intimate relationships with. So, this isn't really something that came from the past only. This is something that affects people who are who are, who are part of society today. And in addition to that, you know, when we often tend to think what the impact of residential school on the student or the child who went to residential school. But residential school often also left generations of parents who had their children forcibly removed from their care, and were left with no control over anything that happened with their children. And a huge sense of hopelessness and helplessness was imparted to them through
