The historical forces and events that shape us
“In the 21st century, we are facing an enormity of pressing challenges, many of which have at their source buried collective traumas, across cultures, throughout history, and spanning generations.” Thomas Hubl
“Trauma exists in the collective sphere, too, affecting entire nations and peoples at different moments in history.” Gabor and Daniel Maté
“To take children from their families and their countries was an abuse; to strip them of their identity was an abuse; to forget them and deny them their loss was an abuse… Few tragedies can compare.” Margaret Humphreys
“Making an injury visible and public is often the first step in remedying it, and political change often follows culture, as what was tolerated is seen to be intolerable, or what was overlooked becomes obvious.” Rebecca Solnit
Today’s post is about collective and historical trauma. I’m also including a new drawing and an extract from something I posted on April 19th, 2015 related to historical trauma, the silence around it and its impact on future generations. It’s like coming full circle back to these same topics.
Historical / collective trauma is the ocean we all swim in and the air we breathe whether we are aware of it or not. It’s the thread that ties us all together and gets knotted with our personal traumas. It impacts us and those around us, and it is interwoven with these other more personal wounds, which are always situated and influenced by the larger contexts we reside in and engage with. Gilan Hirschberger defines collective trauma as a cataclysmic event that shatters the basic fabric of society. Aside from the horrific loss of life, collective trauma is also a crisis of meaning. In the relevant literature around collective trauma it is supported that a collective trauma transforms into a collective memory and then becomes a system of meaning that has the potential to help groups to redefine who they are. For both victims and perpetrators, deriving meaning from trauma is an ongoing process that is continuously negotiated within groups and between groups.
For victims, the memory of trauma may be adaptive for group survival, but it can also be a reminder of existential threat. Unprocessed and unmetabolized this trauma is like secrets buried in the sand. It will manifest as disease, dysfunction, emotional pain, wasted opportunities, until reckoning and healing take place. It also requires the construction of a new collective self. For perpetrators, the memory of trauma poses a threat to their group / collective identity that may be dealt with either by accepting responsibility or by denying history, minimizing culpability for events, transforming the memory of the events. The dissonance between historical crimes and the need to uphold a positive image of the group may be resolved either by not identifying with one’s group anymore or by creating a new group narrative that acknowledges the crime committed, while working towards making amends.
Albert Bandura, who developed the concept of moral agency, which is manifested in both the power to refrain from behaving inhumanely and the proactive power to behave humanely, suggests that in order for those who have committed violations against a group or community to accept the responsibility it is necessary for the self-regulatory mechanisms governing moral conduct to be activated; however, there are many psychosocial maneuvers by which moral disengagement can occur. Moral disengagement may center on the cognitive restructuring of inhumane conduct into a worthy one by moral justification, disavowal of a sense of personal agency by displacement of responsibility; sanitizing language;, disregarding or minimizing the injurious effects of one ‘s actions; dehumanization of those who are victimized, etc. He writes that “Many inhumanities operate through a supportive network of legitimate enterprises run by otherwise considerate people who contribute to destructive activities by disconnected subdivision of functions and diffusion of responsibility. Given the many mechanisms for disengaging moral control, civilized life requires, in addition to humane personal standards, safeguards built into social systems that uphold compassionate behavior and renounce cruelty” (Bandura A. (1999), Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), 193–209. / SAGE).
Public acknowledgement and conversations around events that have traumatized communities and peoples allow people to process and make sense of what has happened and it opens up space for healing. It disrupts narratives and processes of moral disengagement. Hopefully, through this process and dialogue less dysfunction is projected on to others and fewer traumas are passed down to younger generations. In a talk show the Greek actor, Yiannis Bezos, recently noted that for instance, here in Greece there has been no public discussion or evaluation yet about the impact that the seven year dictatorship has had on the evolution of our society, our education system and culture, and how the legacy of those years has stifled growth and maturity in many areas. Oppressive regimes create fear of expressing one’s views. People in Greece have during various historical eras been punished, exiled, imprisoned, tortured and killed for their beliefs and views. This fear, even unarticulated, is passed down from one generation to another creating a certain kind of fearful citizen, blocking expression and progress in general. We end up, as Bezos noted, with people being afraid of all sorts of things like microphones, being visible, public speaking, and so on. Public discussions remove the veil of secrecy and free up energy for change and better ways of living and co-existing.
The need to write about these topics today partly arose as I was reading about the apology to the Indigenous peoples in Canada from Pope Francis. In relation to this historical trauma in his new book, The Myth of Normal, Gabor; Maté and son, write: “… trauma exists in the collective sphere, too, affecting entire nations and peoples at different moments in history. To this day it is visited upon some groups with disproportionate force, as on Canada’s Indigenous people. Their multigenerational deprivation and persecution at the hands of colonialism and especially the hundred-year agony of their children, abducted from their families and reared in church-run residential schools where physical, sexual, and emotional abuse were rampant, has left them with tragic legacies of addiction, mental and physical illness, suicide, and the ongoing transmission of trauma to new generations….. Nearly 30 percent of the jail population in this country is composed of Indigenous people, who make up no more than 5 percent of the general population. …., the inheritors and carriers of a toxic colonial legacy of extermination and expulsion….”
Maté writes this period is “known as “the Sixties Scoop,” when the Canadian child-welfare system abducted thousands of First Nations children from their homes and placed them with non-Indigenous families; atrocious living situations on reservations; ongoing multigenerational trauma; and the persisting encroachment on and pollution of Indigenous lands for economic projects that profit distant corporations. In 2021 the world was horrified at the discovery of thousands of small bodies at the former sites of residential schools across Canada. Many other thousands are known to have disappeared whose remains are yet to be found and whose deaths, deeply etched and grieved in the consciousness of their families and communities, have not until recently been formally acknowledged by the governmental and ecclesiastic institutions responsible. Nearly two thousand unmarked graves have been identified as of late 2021. Another five thousand to ten thousand such graves likely exist and await finding.”
Pope Frances delivered a historical apology, with differing responses. An apology is a first important step, but what happens after that, what steps are taken to help people who have been robbed of so much and who are marginalised, impoverished, dislocated, reduced in numbers. Apologies need to be accompanied by restoration and compensation. The Pope apologized for abuses and took responsibility for the church’s cooperation in generations of horrendous abuse and cultural suppression of indigenous children at Catholic residential schools across Canada. Pope Francis has said he is on a “penitential pilgrimage” to atone for the church’s role in the residential school system, in which generations of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes and forced to attend church-run, government-funded boarding schools to assimilate them into Christian, Canadian society. More than 150,000 Native children were taken from their homes from the 19th century until the 1970s and placed in the schools in an effort to isolate them from the influence of their families and culture. The Canadian government has stated that physical and sexual abuse were rampant at the schools, with students being beaten for speaking their native languages. The Pope’s apology has come after the apologies delivered by the current and previous prime minister of Canada. Some people have welcomed the apology as useful to their healing and others believe it is the first step to a much needed longer process of reconciliation for institutional wrongs dating back centuries. The Pope acknowledged that the wounds and injustices will take time to heal.
Below is an extract from a longer post I wrote in 2015:
….. One topic I am interested in is that of child emigration policies and practices of breaking families and forced adoption that took place throughout the 20th century even up until the late sixties in many countries. I have referred to films and books in previous posts, but, I will briefly, make some reference here again. To begin with, like Margaret Humphreys I believe that few tragedies can compare with ‘taking children from their families and their countries and stripping them of their identity and then denying that their loss was an abuse’ because as she says ‘our sense of background or heritage is an important part of our identity’ (Margaret Humphreys, Empty Cradles, 1994). In her book, Empire’s Children: Child Emigration, Welfare and the Decline of the British World, Ellen Boucher writes ‘in the 1980s the silence surrounding the subject of the lost families started to be broken. The decade witnessed a rapid growth of advocacy groups dedicated to raising awareness about the history of child emigration and to seeking redress for men and women who had been hurt by the policy. One of the first was the Child Migrant Friendship Society of Western Australia, founded in 1982 by a group of former migrants who aimed to relieve ‘the suffering, helplessness, distress, misfortune, poverty, destitution and emotional disturbance’ that they believed the initiative had produced…,
Five years later Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham based social worker established the Child Migrants Trust, which campaigned to pressure the emigration charities, as well as the British and Australian governments, to acknowledge the trauma endured by former migrants. Humphreys documented her experience and work in her book Empty Cradles. The Trust was instrumental in the release of a 1989 award winning documentary, Lost Children of the Empire by Joanna Mack, which looks at the fate of some of the 150,000 British orphans, who – often without their parents’ knowledge and consent – were shipped abroad to be brought up in children’s homes and many were exploited and abused. Children are the most vulnerable members of society, and as such, have been victimized and exploited across time. Children have also, across time and especially during the 20th century, been institutionalized, taken away from their mothers and adopted illegally….
This practice began at the turn of the century, but children were still deported overseas up until 1967! Joanna Mack produced and directed a documentary, uncovering the story of child migration from the UK under which children as young a three were shipped to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the former Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The film’s broadcast in the UK and Australia, and the subsequent book of the same name written by Philip Bean and Joy Melville, helped secure the foundation of the Child Migrants Trust and their work supporting families separated by these practices. The Leaving of Liverpool (John Alsop, Sue Smith, Penny Chapman), an award-winning television mini-series produced by ABC/ BBC in 1992, is a dramatized account of unaccompanied child migration from Britain to Australia. It was screened in Britain and in Australia and was mentioned in parliamentary inquiries in both countries .It had a significant impact in putting child migration ‘on the map’ in terms of awareness among the general population and those people who had been sent to Western Australia as child migrants.
Gordon Brown apologized in 2010 to the children immigrants that were sent to Australia, a practice that lasted over 40 years right up until the late 1960s. The Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard delivered a national apology to victims of forced adoption in 2013. Kevin Rudd also apologized to the 500, 000 Forgotten Australians and their families.
The following small extracts are from his apology:
“Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care. Sorry for the tragedy the absolute tragedy of childhoods lost’…. ‘To those who were told they were orphans but were taken here without their parents consent, we acknowledge the lies you were told, the lies told to your mothers and fathers and the pain the lies caused for a life time’.
In previous posts I have also referred to films like Rabbit-Proof Fence by Christine Olsen, based on the book published by Doris Pilkington, the daughter of the real Molly Craig, and songs about The Stolen Generation in Australia…… In a nutshell, the film is about an Aborigine girl’s long walk home after she and her sister are taken forcefully from their mother and placed in a camp a thousand miles away, as part of the state policy of removing girls from aboriginal communities and educating them separately, in order to eradicate their aboriginal identity and raise them ‘white’. Thousands of children were forcefully removed from their families and placed in foster families, children’s homes or missions between 1890s and 1970s. In 2008 the Australian government apologised to The Stolen Generation. Of course, apologies alone may not be sufficient to erase or heal years of loss and pain, but at least it is one small step towards the recognition of wrong and unethical practices, and it also contributes to breaking social denial and secrecy surrounding practices like this around the world. At least some governments have been forced by survivors’ activism and society’s demand to take responsibility for dark chapters in history and work towards reconciliation and restoration.
They took the children away (Archie Roach) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL_DBNkkcSE
Unfortunately, such practices and policies did not take place only in Britain and Australia, but in many countries in the 20th century. For instance, in Greece thousands of children were removed from their families and placed in camps known as Queen Frederica’s ‘children’s towns’ after the civil war. Since 1950 there have been revelations about thousands of illegal adoptions of these children abroad, especially, in the USA. However, in Greece silence has not been broken officially and no government so far has made any attempt to investigate, discuss or apologize. These topics have remained taboo subjects because as in most cases they were the result of past government policies and initiatives and a lot of people were involved, including authorities, charities and the Church……..