Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T20:35:47.177Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

BODIES DON'T JUST TELL STORIES, THEY TELL HISTORIES

Embodiment of Historical Trauma among American Indians and Alaska Natives1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2011

Karina L. Walters*
Affiliation:
School of Social Work and Indigenous Wellness Research Institute, University of Washington
Selina A. Mohammed
Affiliation:
Nursing Program, University of Washington Bothell
Teresa Evans-Campbell
Affiliation:
School of Social Work and Indigenous Wellness Research Institute, University of Washington
Ramona E. Beltrán
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Indigenous Wellness Research Institute, University of Washington
David H. Chae
Affiliation:
Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
Bonnie Duran
Affiliation:
Department of Health Services and Indigenous Wellness Research Institute, University of Washington
*
Karina L. Walters, School of Social Work, University of Washington, Box 354900, 4101 Fifteenth Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 98105. E-mail: kw5@uw.edu

Abstract

Increasingly, understanding how the role of historical events and context affect present-day health inequities has become a dominant narrative among Native American communities. Historical trauma, which consists of traumatic events targeting a community (e.g., forced relocation) that cause catastrophic upheaval, has been posited by Native communities and some researchers to have pernicious effects that persist across generations through a myriad of mechanisms from biological to behavioral. Consistent with contemporary societal determinants of health approaches, the impact of historical trauma calls upon researchers to explicitly examine theoretically and empirically how historical processes and contexts become embodied. Scholarship that theoretically engages how historically traumatic events become embodied and affect the magnitude and distribution of health inequities is clearly needed. However, the scholarship on historical trauma is limited. Some scholars have focused on these events as etiological agents to social and psychological distress; others have focused on events as an outcome (e.g., historical trauma response); others still have focused on these events as mechanisms or pathways by which historical trauma is transmitted; and others have focused on historical trauma-related factors (e.g., collective loss) that interact with proximal stressors. These varied conceptualizations of historical trauma have hindered the ability to cogently theorize it and its impact on Native health. The purpose of this article is to explicate the link between historical trauma and the concept of embodiment. After an interdisciplinary review of the “state of the discipline,” we utilize ecosocial theory and the indigenist stress-coping model to argue that contemporary physical health reflects, in part, the embodiment of historical trauma. Future research directions are discussed.

Type
Unpacking Racism and its Health Consequences
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

The theoretical development of this work was supported in part by the Network for Multicultural Research on Health and Healthcare, Dept. of Family Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; as well as supported in part by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (5U01HL087322-05), National Institute of Mental Health (MH65821), the Office of Research on Women's Health, The Office of AIDS Research, and the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

References

REFERENCES

Adelson, Naomi (2005). The Embodiment of Inequity: Health Disparities in Aboriginal Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 96: S45S61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barnes, Patricia M., Adams, Patricia F., and Powell-Griner, Eve (2010). Health Characteristics of the American Indian or Alaska Native Adult Population: United States, 2004–2008. National Health Statistics Reports, (20): 1–22.Google Scholar
Bennett, Peter (1999). Type 2 Diabetes Among the Pima Indians of Arizona: An Epidemic Attributable to Environmental Change? Nutrition Reviews, 57(5): S51S54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brand, Sarah R., Brennan, Patricia A., Newport, D. Jeffrey, Smith, Alicia K., Weiss, Tamara, and Stowe, Zachary N. (2010). The Impact of Maternal Childhood Abuse on Maternal and Infant HPA Axis Function in the Postpartum Period. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 35(5): 686693.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brave Heart, Maria Yellow Horse (1999). Oyate Ptayela: Rebuilding the Lakota Nation Through Addressing Historical Trauma Among Lakota parents. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 2(1): 109126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chae, David H. and Walters, Karina L. (2009). Racial Discrimination and Racial Identity Attitudes in Relation to Self-Rated Health and Physical Pain and Impairment Among Two-Spirit American Indians/Alaska Natives. American Journal of Public Health, 99(S1): S144S151.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Evans-Campbell, Teresa (2008). Historical Trauma in American Indian/Native Alaska Communities: A Multilevel Framework for Exploring Impacts on Individuals, Families, and Communities. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 23(3): 316338.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holliday, Robin (2006). Epigenetics: A Historical Overview. Epigenetics, 1(2): 7680.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jessop, D. S., Richards, L. J., and Harbuz, M. S. (2004). Effects of Stress on Inflammatory Autoimmune Disease: Destructive or Protective? Stress, 7(4): 261266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kaati, G., Bygren, L. O., and Edvinsson, S. (2002). Cardiovascular And Diabetes Mortality Determined by Nutrition During Parents' And Grandparents' Slow Growth Period. European Journal of Human Genetics, 10(11): 682688.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krieger, Nancy (1999). Embodying Inequality: A Review of Concepts, Measures, and Methods for Studying Health Consequences of Discrimination. International Journal of Health Services, 29(2): 295352.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krieger, Nancy (2005). Embodiment: A Conceptual Glossary For Epidemiology. Journal of Epidemiological Community Health, 59(5): 350355.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krieger, Nancy and Davey Smith, George (2004). “Bodies Count,” and Body Counts: Social Epidemiology and Embodying Inequality. Epidemiologic Reviews, 26: 92103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuzawa, Christopher W. and Sweet, Elizabeth (2009). Epigenetics and the Embodiment of Race: Developmental Origins of US Racial Disparities In Cardiovascular Health. American Journal of Human Biology, 21(1): 215.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lyons, A. C. and Chamberlain, K. (2006). Health Psychology: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Matthews, Stephen G. and Phillips, David I. W. (2010). Minireview: Transgenerational Inheritance of the Stress Response: A New Frontier in Stress Research. Endocrinology, 151(1): 713.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nagata, Donna K., Trierweiler, Steven J., and Talbot, Rebecca (1999). Long-Term Effects Of Internment During Early Childhood In Third Generation Japanese Americans. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 69(1): 1929.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Palacios, Janelle F. and Portillo, Carmen J. (2009). Understanding Native Women's Health: Historical Legacies. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 20(1): 1527.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seeman, T. E., Dubin, L. F., and Seeman, M. (2003). Religiosity/Spirituality and Health: A Critical Review of the Evidence for Biological Pathways. American Psychologist, 58(1): 5363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walters, Karina L., Beltran, Ramona E., Huh, David, and Evans-Campbell, Teresa (2011). Dis-placement and Dis-ease: Land, Place and Health among American Indians and Alaska Natives. In Burton, Linda M., Kemp, Susan P., Leung, ManChui, Matthews, Stephen A., and Takeuchi, David T. (Eds.), Communities, Neighborhood, and Health: Expanding the Boundaries of Place, pp. 163199. Philadephia, PA: Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walters, Karina L. and Simoni, Jane M. (2002). Reconceptualizing Native Women's Health: An “Indigenist” Stress-Coping Model. American Journal of Public Health, 92(4): 520524.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whitbeck, Les B., Adams, Gary W., Hoyt, Dan R., and Chen, Xiaojin (2004). Conceptualizing and Measuring Historical Trauma Among American Indian People. American Journal of Community Psychology, 33 (3-4): 119130.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yehuda, Rachel (1999). Risk Factors for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Yehuda, Rachel and Bierer, Linda M. (2009). The Relevance of Epigenetics to PTSD: Implications for the DSM-V. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 22(5): 427434.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yehuda, Rachel, Engel, Stephanie Mulherin, Brand, Sarah R., Seckl, Jonathan, Marcus, Sue M., and Berkowitz, Gertrud S. (2005). Transgenerational Effects of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Babies of Mothers Exposed to the World Trade Center Attacks during Pregnancy. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 90(7): 41154118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar