Reclaiming Our Identities

The "Reclaiming Our Identities" conference was a time of recognizing the past, the present, and the healing that is needed for many because of past traumas in their lives. There were comments from the youth that attended this conference, such as, "We should do this once a month!" So we hope to be able to continue to provide conferences like this every year. There is a need and want from our community to have their voices heard. This was a perfect opportunity to share with others to help those that may still be struggling with finding a voice.

The first presenter, Brad Marsden gave a brief presentation on historical trauma due to residential (Canada)/boarding schools (US) and how that has created an intergenerational effect in many aspects of everyday life today. The first exercise that we did was called "Circle in a Box." This exercise is where we gathered in a huge circle and it was designed in a way that embraced one another.

This was used to describe how the past Tribal communities were historically set up. The medicine was the center for praying, then came children/youth, the elders, the mothers, and the protectors. What an amazing feeling to know everyone in the community and we all had a purpose! To feel protected, embraced, and to know that someone truly care about you. This is exactly where we are trying to head towards in this Journey to Wellness.
So what happened to Tribal communities…? The way that Tribal communities are today, just did not happen overnight. There is a deep down historical trauma that many of our elders have never shared before and some may not ever understand what has happened to them.

Even though there are many individuals that say, "Why can’t those Indians just get over it!?!? It happened so long ago. Time to start dealing with the present." Although many call it ancient history, it is obviously still affecting present day.

When there was that long era of "Save the Man, Kill the Indian." Native children were taken away from their homes from the ages of 3 & older. Our people were imprisoned if they fought for their children.

As any person would feel the loss of a family member, that leads to depression. Alcohol was introduced to Tribal communities and many self-medicated to numb the pain from losing their children, community, and way of life.

As a result of boarding schools, children were exposed to a lack of affection, lost their identity, became shameful of their identity, which is called internalized oppression (hatred of self). The survivors of this era that went to these boarding schools became parents and were scared to teach anything that identified their children as Native, and guess what they self-medicated & abused their children the way they were treated. That was NORMAL!

We were honored to listen to our Chief of Lummi, Bill James, many others from and our own community talk about how relevant this so-called "historical trauma" is still existing to this very present day traumas that are happening this very day, and even to this very second. There were stories shared on how abusive these boarding schools were, stories of the long cold rides being hauled off to these schools as if they were a bunch of savages.

Definition of a savage mean the following, "(1) Not domesticated; (2) Not civilized;(3) Vicious; (4) Lack of polish manners." All of these definitions are not compliments. Come on now, these were human beings, our family, our grandparents, and they were the children of the community at one time.

It’s a real story that has been a big influence on why so many of our people are the way they are today. Abuse can affect a whole community, not just the individual!

The last picture is of how we are interacting as a community in present day. Not everyone is interacting or behaving this way, but coming to an understanding and being able to know that it’s NOT-

NORMAL will be the first step to this Journey to Wellness.

Every single person in the community, Tribal members, people serving our Tribal community, or surrounding communities working with Tribes, need to take a step back to think about why our people have been affected, and go forth in helping individuals.

Being able to recognize that the way people are today is not completely an individual cause, they do not just have a drug and alcohol problem, or a tendency to abuse their loved ones for no reason. There is a multitude of factors that influence the struggle, so in order to help individuals (self & others) we all must understand what has caused the chaos in present day.

as summarized by Lummi Monthly Newsletter.