Timeline Overview

Historically traumatic events are events designed to eradicate a people (genocide) and/or their culture, language, and lifeways (ethnocide) and/or their worldviews, teachings and epistemologies (epistemicide). Historically traumatic events should not be confused with traumatic events such as hurricanes- as those too produce significant trauma and upheaval- but historical trauma events specifically target a group- by nationality, religion, or other oppressed status with the intent to eradicate or in some cases, subjugate and assimilate the group into the dominant class. Historically events consist of events such as massacres, forced relocation and removal from traditional homelands, forced removal and separation of children from parents, and medical experimentation among many other types of events. These events are never singular events, but consist of a series of targeted traumatic events over generations. These events are experienced as collective traumas and in many cases, the psychological, physical and spiritual aftermath of these events can be carried into subsequent generations-whether these events are known or conscious in the subsequent generations. Recent epigenetic research is beginning to provide preliminary evidence of intergenerational transmission of stress from traumatic events in preceding generations.

It is important to note that historically traumatic events targeting American Indians and Alaska Natives in what is now the United States of America is particularly fraught and continues to manifest to this day. Historically traumatic events include not only events from 500 years ago, but also include events that happen daily in modern times. For example-the illegal dispossession of Indigenous lands for oil extraction in the DAPL pipeline and targeting of Native women and girls for sexual exploitation and human trafficking leaving a trail of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in the United States and Canada are prime examples of modern historically traumatic events.

Finally, historically traumatic events do not occur in isolation from the polices and structures that support the unfolding of such trauma. American Indian and Alaska Native communities continue to survive and thrive despite being continuously occupied and living within the structures of U.S. settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is a system that is borne of land dispossession and attempted erasure of AIAN land ties and identities. Settler colonialism is the structure and the historically traumatic events serve to perpetuate and uphold the structure, system and policies of a settler colonial society.

This chronological timeline provides three elements: the settler colonial policies (green), the historically traumatic events (black), and the resistance movements by AIAN peoples (blue) in fighting oppressive and genocidal polices and surviving historically traumatic events. The events documented here are not exhaustive- there are many more stories of atrocities among the current 573 federally and 100 state tribes than can be documented here. The events provided are mislabeled as “wars, battles or skirmishes” in American textbooks, but the events noted in this document are not wars, but are known to AIAN communities as massacres-primarily targeting women, children and communities for purposes of extermination or subjugation. Historically traumatic events- by definition (see Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) are genocidal events. According to Article 2-genocide is defined as: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Noting such atrocities and in support of Indigenous peoples worldwide, in 2007, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP or DOTROIP) was passed delineating and defining the individual and collective rights of Indigenous peoples, including their ownership rights to cultural and ceremonial expression, identity, language, employment, health, education and other issues. It “emphasizes the rights of Indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions, and to pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations”. It “prohibits discrimination against indigenous peoples”, and it “promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them and their right to remain distinct and to pursue their own visions of economic and social development”  with a major emphasis on Indigenous rights to protect their culture and tradition in order to preserve their heritage from over controlling nation-states. In 2010, President Obama declared support for the declaration.