Post date: Oct 16, 2012 4:01:29 PM
Please join the American Indian Studies Interdisciplinary Group on Friday, October 19, 12:30 – 2:00 for our Faculty Writing Workshop:
COLONIAL GENOCIDE AND HISTORICAL TRAUMA IN NATIVE NORTH AMERICA
Complicating Contemporary Attributions
Joseph P. Gone, University of Michigan
The concept of historical trauma entered the mental health literature in the 1990s as an explanatory frame for rampant substance abuse, trauma, violence, depression, pathological grief, and suicide in present-day indigenous communities. During the past two decades, this concept has increasingly been used to describe a form of vulnerability to mental health problems that stems from ancestral suffering and that accrues across generations into formidable legacies of disability and distress for contemporary descendants. One difficulty with this account, however, is the sweeping and casual designation of various instances of past intergroup violence as colonial genocide. In this chapter, I critically assess the widespread attribution of genocide to indigenous North American experiences of colonial suffering, and conclude that such attributions are frequently overgeneralized. I argue that this term is best reserved for specific instances of group-based mass murder because overgeneralized attributions of genocide disregard historical complexity, diminish its ethical enormity, and compromise prospects for future reconciliation.
Joseph P. Gone is associate professor of Psychology and American Culture at the University of Michigan.
Time and location:
Friday October 19
12:30 – 2:00 pm
3773 Haven Hall
Lunch will be served.
Professor Gone’s paper will be pre-circulated to solicit comments and questions from the audience. Please email Frank Kelderman at fpkeld@umich.edu to RSVP and for Ctools access.