English - Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies

F. INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA
Intergenerational or multi-generational trauma happens when the effects of
trauma are not resolved in one generation. When trauma is ignored and there is
no support for dealing with it, the trauma will be passed from one generation to the
next (AHF, 1999).
Many generations of Inuit, Métis and First Nations children were victimized by the
Indian Act, residential schools, forced sterilization, the ‘60s scoop, the millennium
scoop and colonization.
Abuse and neglect marked their adult lives, as well as the lives of their descendants
whose families have been characterized by further abuse and neglect.
Many Aboriginal adults have struggled with the pain, rage and grief of unresolved
trauma. Those who sought escape through marriage or domestic partnerships were
often overwhelmed by the complex demands of intimacy, parenting and family life,
without previous experience of it or preparation for its demands. Some were also
re-victimized by domestic violence or became, themselves, the abusers of their
partners, children or parents.
Increasingly, evidence suggests that trauma is not just psychological, but biological
and even hereditary. A 2010 article by Michael Stewart revealed that, “By altering the
chemical mechanisms regulating gene expression, these modifications may become
embedded in the male gene line, and can be passed down to the victim’s children.”
It is only within the past decade that the intergenerational nature of trauma has been
explored within Aboriginal communities. The removal of children from the home for
long periods of time diminished opportunities for the transmission of family values,
parenting knowledge and community behaviour between generations. As a result,
inappropriate parenting models were introduced, the necessary knowledge to
raise their own children was lost and children were unknowingly introduced to
dysfunctional models of behaviour. The legacy of residential schools includes
parenting models based on punishment, abuse, coercion and control. “The bonds
between many hundreds of Aboriginal children and their families and nations were
bent and broken, with disastrous results” (RCAP, 1996a).
“The cumulative impact of trauma experienced by both children and their parents as
a result of Canada’s residential school policy continues to have consequences for
subsequent generations of children” (Menzies, 2010). If you subject one generation
to that kind of parenting and they become adults and have children, those children
become subjected to that treatment and then you subject a third generation to the
same traumas from the residential school system. You then have a whole society
affected by isolation, sadness, anger, hopelessness and pain.
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