Native American communities in Michigan are still feeling the impacts of cultural assimilation experienced at boarding schools during the nineteenth century.
WCMU's Tina Sawyer sat down with clinical therapist Christina Otto and intake specialist Aleigha Reinsberg from Behavioral Health at the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe in Mount Pleasant to learn more about how this trauma persists and the steps this community is taking to combat the aftermath of abuse.
Editor's note: This transcript was lightly edited for clarity and length.
Tina: The boarding school era. What is that? Actually, what is the timeline?
Christina: The last boarding school was in Canada, and I believe it was in the 90s, that the last one shut down. But like, late 1800s, is when the first school came about. The first initial, like cohorts going through, you know, that was, you know, the first introduction, and, you know, then they would come home. And so the, the cycle would continue on and, and it wasn't until around the 50s, that people started to recognize some of this stuff that was happening. And so they tried to revamp some of the programming. I mean, not all the schools were were like that, but a lot of them were, and then some were left open and, you know, run by us and, you know, completely different. I mean, there, there are a couple still around in the US but not run as you know, how they were before.
Tina: Could you explain what historical trauma is, and what the lasting effects are.
Christina: Historical trauma is trauma that's passed down from one generation to another, it actually stems from boarding school era, but I would say it probably stems from earlier times. So the boarding school era, you know, kids were taken from their homes into these schools for the majority of their their schooling and, you know, taught a different language and different culture and then coming back into it back into the community that they once knew, and they don't know anymore. Lots of abuse happened, many different forms, in the boarding school so that we lost the ability to parent but some of that abuse kind of stemmed down from generation to generation.
Tina: The historical trauma is basically still going on?
Christina: I would say so. So, you know, we we work at behavioral health. And, you know, that's, that's something that we see that is really common, some of that dysfunction, that family dysfunction, some of the abuse getting passed down, potentially leading to substance abuse.
Tina: How do you treat someone with this kind of trauma? Are there cultural specific practices that are being used? And if so, what what are they? Aleigha?
Aleigha: From intake, we immediately jump right into historical trauma. We want to know what they've been through, what still comes up today. One of the first questions I asked when I'm discussing what their educational history is, do you have a parent or a relative who went to the boarding schools? Because that plays a huge part in your experience growing up, especially if it was an immediate family? If it was close? If it how far away? Is it? What does that generational look like? We always have that focus that trauma is there. So we have all of our clinicians are trained in EMDR, which is a trauma focused therapy, we also have our traditional healer, because oftentimes, it's not only Western ways that you want to go about things and healing.
Tina: So what did they do as part of the traditional way?
Aleigha: So we have the traditional healer who has traditional medicines. He also works closely with our psychiatrists to understand how those all those medications will react with that.
Tina: Is it like herbs?
Aleigha: Yeah, yep. Okay, herbs, plants, whatever. Yeah, oils, all of that we and all of our therapists, we actually have access to oils and our four sacred medicines are available. Traditional healing, we get the heal does have a sweat lodge once a month.
Tina: Is it like a sauna?
Aleigha: More than a sauna. Yeah. But it's a ceremony. I mean, it's it's our traditional ways. And sometimes people don't know them. So a lot of its educational, a lot of people lost a lot of their culture, their language, their pathway of learning about what the traditional ways are. And I think it helps with identity and helping them feel feel more confident in themselves, I guess, in choosing the intervention or the ways they want to go about things. And we are certainly mindful that not everybody wants to go to the you know, traditional route, I definitely make sure that it's gotten we have people who still come through very religious, which is something's what we need to be mindful of, we can't push, hey, this is the way to go about things. If that's not where they're at.
Tina: How long does it take of these treatments for someone to really see that they're improving? Is there a normal amount of time? Or is it individual?
Aleigha: Absolutely individual. I mean, there's we can't put a timeline on someone's healing at all.
Christina: You know, it is scary. And it is hard. And I, I use this term a lot or this little thing is either way, it's hard, whether you do something or whether you're not. It's hard living the life that you're living in that dysfunction and that chaos and that substance abuse and all that and then it's hard, getting better getting well taking a look at ourselves, you know, making small changes that lead to big changes. So it's it's all hard. I mean, it's what kind of hard do you want?
Tina: But it all leads to better things. At least the healing part of it.
Aleigha: Yes. There's trauma around reminding everyone that there's a lot of resilience factors in there. It builds... trauma builds resiliency.
