Historical Trauma Is Real. So Is Indigenous Resilience.
October 13, 2026
🎯 Reframe / Why this matters
Yesterday was Indigenous Peoples' Day. For many people it passes quietly: a social media post, a school worksheet, maybe a land acknowledgment read at the start of a meeting and then forgotten.
Indigenous communities have heard many stories about themselves that start and end with loss. Loss is part of the truth. Land was taken, languages were forbidden, children were sent to boarding schools designed to "kill the Indian, save the man." That pain didn't stay in the past. It moves through families and bodies across generations.
But a story that only talks about damage leaves out what matters most. Indigenous peoples are still here, still speaking their languages, still raising children in ceremony, still leading movements for land, water, and justice. This isn't a history lesson. It's a living present.
This week, I want to hold both truths together. The harm is real, and so is the resilience. Neither one cancels out the other.
🧠 What the science shows
Trauma can be passed down through families and communities. Lakota social work researcher Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart described historical trauma as the emotional and psychological wounding that builds up across generations after mass collective harm (Brave Heart, 2003). It helps explain why grief, anger, and mistrust can show up in people who never lived through the original events.
Bodies carry history, not just stories. Researchers studying Native communities have described how colonization, forced relocation, and discrimination show up in physical health as well as mental health, through chronic stress, illness, and shortened lives (Walters et al., 2011). Health disparities aren't a personal failing. They're a record of what happened.
Culture protects. In a landmark study of First Nations communities in British Columbia, communities with more cultural continuity (self-government, land claims, control over education and health services, and cultural facilities) had dramatically better youth mental health outcomes than communities without those supports (Chandler & Lalonde, 1998).
Healing that's grounded in culture is real treatment. Psychologist Joseph Gone, a member of the Aaniiih-Gros Ventre tribal nation, argues that Indigenous cultural practices aren't just an add-on to "real" therapy. For many people, culture itself is the medicine (Gone, 2013).
🧭 ACT lens
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy talks about interconnection, presence, and living by values. It's important to say plainly that Indigenous peoples understood these ideas long before Western psychology gave them names. Humility is the right starting point here.
For those of us who aren't Native, ACT can still help us show up with more honesty. Learning this history often brings up discomfort, guilt, defensiveness, or the urge to look away. ACT invites us to make room for those feelings without letting them decide what we do. Guilt tends to freeze us. Responsibility helps us move. We can sit with a painful truth and still choose to act on our values: respect, justice, and repair.
As a Filipino American, this feels personal to me. The Philippines has its own Indigenous peoples: the Igorot of the Cordillera mountains, the Lumad of Mindanao, the Aeta, the Mangyan, and many others. Many Cordillera communities resisted Spanish rule for centuries. In 1904, more than a thousand Filipinos, many of them Igorot, were brought to the St. Louis World's Fair and put on display as "primitives." That history reminds me that colonization followed similar patterns across oceans.
Filipino psychology offers a word I love: kapwa, meaning "shared self." Psychologist Virgilio Enriquez described it as the recognition that my identity is bound up with yours (Enriquez, 1992). Kapwa asks us to see others as part of ourselves, not as strangers or as lessons.
“Guilt tends to freeze us. Responsibility helps us move.”
🗺️ Tiny experiments for this week
Learn whose land you're on. Native-land.ca is a helpful starting point, but it's not the final word. Look for the nation's own website to hear how they describe themselves.
Read or listen to one Native creator. Choose a book, podcast, or artist from the resources below. Let Indigenous people tell their own stories.
Give directly. Donate to a Native-led organization, especially one rooted in your local area.
Notice the stereotypes. Pay attention this week to mascots, costumes, and "historical" imagery. Ask yourself what story each one tells, and who gets to tell it.
Practice kapwa. When you catch yourself thinking "those people," try replacing it with "our people." Notice what shifts.
🧷 Untrendy but True
Honoring Indigenous peoples doesn't mean feeling guilty for one day a year. It means listening, making repair, and remembering that they're still here.
Resources for the Curious
📚 Books
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Citizen Potawatomi Nation): brings Indigenous knowledge, science, and gratitude together in a way that changes how you see the world.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer (Ojibwe): Native history from 1890 to today, told as a story of survival rather than disappearance.
Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek Nation): a lyrical memoir by the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate about trauma, art, and finding her voice.
🎧 Podcasts
All My Relations, hosted by Matika Wilbur and Adrienne Keene: warm, smart conversations about Native identity today.
This Land, hosted by Rebecca Nagle (Cherokee Nation): a gripping look at a Supreme Court case that would shape tribal sovereignty.
Toasted Sister Podcast, hosted by Andi Murphy (Diné): Native food, culture, and food sovereignty.
▶️ Video
A lecture by Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart on historical trauma: the concept explained in the words of the researcher who described it.
References
Brave Heart, M. Y. H. (2003). The historical trauma response among Natives and its relationship with substance abuse: A Lakota illustration. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 35(1), 7–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2003.10399988
Chandler, M. J., & Lalonde, C. (1998). Cultural continuity as a hedge against suicide in Canada's First Nations. Transcultural Psychiatry, 35(2), 191–219. https://doi.org/10.1177/136346159803500202
Enriquez, V. G. (1992). From colonial to liberation psychology: The Philippine experience. University of the Philippines Press.
Gone, J. P. (2013). Redressing First Nations historical trauma: Theorizing mechanisms for Indigenous culture as mental health treatment. Transcultural Psychiatry, 50(5), 683–706. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461513487669
Walters, K. L., Mohammed, S. A., Evans-Campbell, T., Beltrán, R. E., Chae, D. H., & Duran, B. (2011). Bodies don't just tell stories, they tell histories: Embodiment of historical trauma among American Indians and Alaska Natives. Du Bois Review, 8(1), 179–189. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X1100018X