A Powerful Awakening: Understanding Historic Trauma for Native Abuse Survivors

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a powerful awakening-nancy bordeaux-web.jpgAs attention turns to relationships

this time of year, for some Native American women, the reality of

their lives is less than loving.

According to U.S. Department of

Justice statistics, Native American women are victims of domestic

violence or physical assault at more than double the rate of other

racial group. An estimated one in three Native American women are

assaulted or raped in their lifetimes and three out of five

experience domestic violence.

The White House proclaimed January

National Stalking Awareness Month and the U.S. Department of

Education declared the same month as National Human Trafficking

Awareness Month. Both issues have an impact on Native women on and

off the reservation. But for one women’s advocate in the Twin Cities,

the goal is to heal the root of the problems through traditional

methods, addressing historical trauma.

Nancy Bordeaux ran away from the

Rosebud Reservation in 1986, escaping an abusive husband who nearly

took her life. She was 27 years-old when she started over in

Minneapolis. There she met other Native people, refugees of

government relocations programs and women like her. There were a lot

of women like her; while Bordeaux’s circumstance was tragic it was,

unfortunately, not uncommon. Nor is it uncommon now.

Bordeaux found work keeping books for

the Mdewakantowan Dakota’s casino operations in Prior Lake, Minn.

She established a peaceful home, but was unhappy in her professional

life, counting money for the tribe. She wanted to help women seeking

to put their lives back together after leaving abusive relationships.

After several attempts Bordeaux

thought she had found a job doing just that when she was hired by the

Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center. They put her to work,

however, on Indian child welfare cases. Bordeaux’s duties included

entering people’s homes, alongside county child protection agents,

to investigate reported maltreatment of Indian children. “That’s

when I started learning about the institutional racism that exists

within the American system of justice,” she said.

The job, she says, started to eat her

alive. “They were opening cases against Indian parents when they

shouldn’t have, removing children from homes, transferring them

into the care of non-Indian people. I no longer wanted to work for a

system that perpetuated genocide – the forced removal and transfer

of children from one ethnic group to another.”

After the realization that she

“couldn’t continue to exist as if I was an assimilated Indian

living in the city,” Bordeaux returned to the Rosebud Reservation

where she sought help and healing among traditional spiritual people.

“Looking back, I realize that the most powerful thing I did to help

my people was return to our ceremonies,” she said.

Today, the 56 year-old Sicangu Lakota

says she is optimistic about the futures of many of the women she’s

helped through her work in women’s advocacy. Bordeaux feels some

satisfaction knowing that the extensive networking she’s done seems

to be having an impact at the national level.

At the urging of Attorney General Eric

Holder, congress passed the 288-page reauthorization of the Violence

Against Women Act last month, which included language proposed by the

Justice Department that for the first time would allow tribal courts

to prosecute non-Indians who assaulted native women on tribal lands.

It would also allow the courts to issue and enforce protective

orders, whether the perpetrator is Indian or non-Indian.

While Bordeaux welcomes the tightening

of laws to aid in the prosecution of abusers, she is focused on

healing the victims. Over the course of her career she has come to

see that no law can mend the flesh, bones and psyche of Native women

who survive assault. There is only one thing that can accomplish

that, she says – a return to traditional spiritual ways, a practice

that will not only heal the present generations, but future

generations as well.

The Circle: You’ve been working

with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault at the

Minneapolis American Indian Center since 2007. How has your approach

to healing changed over those years?

NB: When I first started I was

surprised to learn that many of the women seeking help and healing

did not know their culture. Most could not do something as simple for

themselves as smudge with sage and create a healing space for

themselves. I started looking at how that loss or lack of cultural

knowledge contributed to their hardships.

The Circle: How did you begin

infusing your work with traditional knowledge?

NB: At first, I didn’t. I looked at

all of the programs that were out there for women and emulated some

of the things that were being done. I thought I had to develop all of

these technical skills, organizational strategies, short term and

long term goals, benchmarks, and objectives. None if it came from a

traditional indigenous point-of-view, and most of it did little to

promote healing. Finally, to put it nicely, I realized that it was

all a bit sterile. I began looking for ways to improve my clients’

lives using methods that were true to where I came from, to where

they came from. I began to infuse my approach with traditional

teachings from medicine people, elders, Native doctors and thinkers.

The Circle: As you engage this way

of healing, what were some of your challenges?

NB: The best thing I ever did

professionally was give myself permission to be true to myself, to do

what came naturally. But as I did, I realized that a lot of the

leaders in our Native communities had not yet dealt with their own

historic trauma. They had not done the hard work of looking back at

what our people have been through and sorting it all out. A prominent

female leader here in Minneapolis said to me, “You can’t use

healing in your work because you’re not a therapist.” I said to

her, “But I know my culture.” That’s when it started to click

for me: to heal our women of effects of abuse they have suffered, it

is necessary to address their historic trauma. For Native women, this

can really only be accomplished by restoring traditional culture and

spirituality to the center of their lives.

The Circle: How does addressing

historic trauma heal victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault?

NB: When women understand historic

trauma they can see its effects everywhere in their lives. Once they

understand their place in history they can see how genocide has

contributed to their homelessness, poverty, illnesses, unemployment,

drug and alcohol abuse and lack of self-esteem. When we look into the

past we realize that Native people once lived in harmony with one

another, with the Earth and all living things. When we realize this,

we can look at those practices that kept us healthy, and we see they

can be restored and help us thrive as individuals, families and

communities.

The Circle: When women start to

understand how the experiences of their ancestors are still affecting

them today, what changes do you observe in them?

NB: I see in them the same thing I

experienced when I recognized my own historic trauma – a powerful

awakening. I’ve always wanted to make a difference for my family.

I’ve experienced extreme hardships in my life coming from the

Rosebud Reservation. I had to flee from my reservation, flee from my

life because I used to be married to a man who was terribly abusive.

He went to prison for almost killing me. I blamed him for a lot of

years for doing that to me. I ran up to Minnesota first, then went to

California, then to Washington State. I was looking for something. I

came back and found it in Minneapolis. When I started my own healing

journey I realized that there was something more to domestic abuse.

It was happening in family after family and on reservation after

reservation. This awakening was so powerful that it affected

everything I did in my personal life and my work. This also coincided

with my ability to really help women.

The Circle: As you changed your

professional approach, what were some of the ideas and methods you

incorporated?

NB: The most effective thing I did was

ask for spiritual help in the way our people have been doing for

thousands of years. At first I had trouble believing what I was

seeing, because until then I had not had much success at helping my

clients. But when I asked for spiritual help I received it. I

realized that there are spiritual forces who really want to help. I

started using sage and prayer with all of my clients, and helping

them learn to do these things. One day I was asked to go present at a

local organization that serves battered women. One of the Native

women working there asked me, “How can we practice our culture and

our ceremonies even while we live in the cities?” I said, “For

the most part you can, there are only a few things that you can’t

do, like the sun dance. But always remember you live on ancestral

lands, and that right here is the Bdote, the confluence of the

Minnesota River and the Mississippi Rivers, the origin place of the

Dakota people. Just because we’ve lost some of our ways doesn’t

mean those ways were lost to us. Our ancestral spirits have been here

all along. They’re still here. We know this because when we call

upon them, they come to help.”

The Circle: How is historic trauma

passed from generation to generation?

NB: We have understood for some time

that the conditions of one’s upbringing will dictate much about the

course of their life. What we are now coming to see is that body

memory, or DNA, has gives us inherited traits that also effect who

were become. It is important to note that the trauma that was

inflicted upon our forebears is genetically coded in our bodies. But

what is fascinating is that studies are showing information stored in

our DNA can be changed through positive input as well. When we

practice our culture we pass that on through body memory, and we pass

on the information future generations need for their own healing. I

believe this is the most powerful lesson we can learn about ourselves

as Native American people: how to restore culture to the center of

our lives— not only for ourselves, but for the benefit of future

generations.