Attorney and activist Sherri Mitchell from the Penobscot Nation writes about the collective trauma and “soul wound” [1] that Native Americans have suffered:
My group, Native Americans, have suffered an unrecognized holocaust in this country. The brutal genocide of Native peoples is hard to acknowledge for many, especially for those who have inherited some value from the loss and destruction that occurred here. How do you acknowledge the injustice of genocide, disruption of culture, and the destruction of a way of life when you’re living on the lands of those who have been victimized? It is hard for people to accept that horror and continue to live with the outcome, so they choose to ignore it or minimize the story. The simple truth is that this country was founded on genocide and slavery. . . .
When we don’t allow ourselves to acknowledge the pain—the deep, agonizing soul pain that results from historical trauma—we aren’t able to recognize that we are all carrying some measure of that pain within us. Instead, we allow it to isolate us and keep us cut off from one another. We also fail to recognize that the cause of that pain is not only a violation against us, it is a violation against life itself, and its mournful cries echo through our DNA, and become lodged in our genetic memory. [2]
The collective and intergenerational trauma that Sherri Mitchell describes manifests in individual bodies and requires healing on multiple levels. Kaitlin Curtice, a dear personal friend and member of the Potawatomi Nation, shares:
I am someone who journeys with trauma.
The next step after naming my trauma—the trauma of assimilation, the trauma of being an Indigenous woman who grew up in the Baptist church, the trauma of a broken family, the trauma of struggling with anxiety, and more—was to learn how to live with the reality of those traumas, because once we name something out loud, it becomes true in a way it wasn’t before. My journey with trauma includes learning to love myself in a more embodied way, continuing therapy, and actually stepping out of toxic church spaces and institutions into a fuller journey with the Christian faith that accepts me as I am.
Learning to love myself—my child self, my adult self, my scared self, the courageous self that I keep tucked away a lot of the time—has been the hardest part of my journey with trauma. When we learn to stop blaming our child selves for their trauma, fear, and behaviors, we learn to understand who we are as adults, and we get the chance to become embodied again.
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COME TO ME for all that you need. Come into My Presence with thanksgiving, for thankfulness opens the door to My treasures. When you are thankful, you affirm the central truth that I am Good. I am Light, in whom there is no darkness at all. The assurance that I am entirely Good meets your basic need for security. Your life is not subject to the whims of a sin-stained deity. Relax in the knowledge that the One who controls your life is totally trustworthy. Come to Me with confident expectation. There is nothing you need that I cannot provide.
PSALM 95:2;
Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.
1 JOHN 1:5;
“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” 1 John 1:5, KJV: “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
PSALM 19:7;
“The law of the Lord is perfect;” by which he means not merely the law of Moses but the doctrine of God, the whole run and rule of sacred Writ.
HEBREWS 4:16 ESV
16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need
Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning and Evening Devotional (Jesus Calling®) (p. 260). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
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