Erica is a registered nurse and the health and social services director for a First Nations reserve in northern Ontario. Over the years, she has seen how psychological trauma leads to physical disease. She talks about why treating blood pressure without healing the root causes is like “putting a Band-Aid on a great big hemorrhage.”
“You have worked in this First Nations reserve for 19 years. How has the health of the community changed over those years?”
“I am hopeful that we’re starting to see some changes in the younger generation, but I still feel there’s a long, long way to go. I believe that the trauma that people suffer has a big influence on the development of chronic disease. I see that day in and day out, in terms of diabetes and other chronic illnesses. Our health care system really fails to treat the whole person. It treats symptoms, but it’s just not interested in looking at the deeper, root causes of those symptoms. The system doesn’t have the financial and human resources to facilitate true healing.”
“What would need to happen for true healing?”
“First of all, there has to be recognition of the harm that happened through the residential schools, and through the impact of colonization. The loss of land, language, culture and family has been devastating and continues to have intergenerational impacts. We are making progress but still in this country, there are many people who have a ‘Get over it’ attitude and who do not want to be educated about our dark history. We see this expressed in the media on a regular basis.”
People have no idea of the impact of the repetitive violence and the perpetual cycle of trauma.
“If you or I suffered this amount of trauma, I am not sure we would cope so well.”
“The people I have been fortunate enough to work with get up every day and continue to smile – it amazes me! It’s a true testament to their strength as individuals and as a people.”
“Our health care system doesn’t recognize this. Until we start dealing with trauma as the core issue, we’re just putting a Band-Aid on a great big hemorrhage. After 30 years of nursing, I have come to believe that a body cannot continue to sustain the level of stress that Indigenous people face without something eventually happening, like chronic diseases, mental health issues or addictions.”
“You can’t treat the whole person if you don’t get to the roots of the issue. For true healing to happen, we need to address social determinants like housing, education, income and social supports. We know these have an impact on health outcomes and we consistently see disparities and inequalities between what is given to the mainstream programs and what is funded on the reserve. Reserves were set up to get Indigenous people out of the way. Historically, the reserve systems were not intended for Indigenous people to thrive, be healthy and succeed. They were set up for people to fail.”
Until we have a level playing field, we won’t have healthy people.
“I am hopeful that the calls to action made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission will open the doors for change.”
“I think it would be safe to say that every person in the community has suffered a tragic loss either by illness, accident or suicide and, unfortunately, many have experienced multiple losses.”
“What this means is staff may be caring for clients and grieving about their own losses at the same time. It becomes very difficult to support each other.”
“This is on top of likely having had a traumatic childhood – maybe you were raised by parents who went to residential school and therefore, through no fault of your own, you did not gain parenting skills. Maybe there is addiction or family violence in the home. But, I have seen courage and resilience – the will to keep going in the face of adversity.”
“I am seeing the younger families working hard to develop parenting skills. The kids are more physically active. This community has very strong leadership and they have a clear vision for what needs to be done to heal.”
“The loss of their language, the land, and their culture has been devastating. With that came a loss of identity. Indigenous people are working very hard on bringing that back. There is a very strong language revitalization movement, and a movement to reconnect to the land and culture. For about five years now, every fall there’s a community moose hunt. About three weeks ago, they had a spring fish harvest.”
“We are directed to incorporate the land, language and culture into all of our health care programming. The future generation is going to be raised with that, and they will have that strong identity of themselves as proud Anishnabe people. That’s where I see hope. The young children will have a strong belief in who they are, and stand strong in their place in the world. This will be true healing.”
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