Hartmann, W. E., & Gone, J. P. (2014). American Indian historical trauma: Community perspectives from two Great Plains medicine men. American Journal of Community Psychology, 54(3-4), 274-288.

Abstract 

The field of community psychology has long been interested in the relations between how community problems are defined, what interventions are developed in response, and to what degree power is distributed as a result. Tensions around these issues have come to the fore in debates over the influence of historical trauma (HT) in American Indian (AI) communities. After interviewing the two most influential medicine men on a Great Plains res- ervation to investigate how these tensions were being resolved, we found that both respondents were engaging with their own unique elaboration of HT theory. The first, George, engaged in a therapeutic discourse that reconfig- ured HT as a recognizable but malleable term that could help to communicate his ‘‘spiritual perspective’’ on distress and the need for healing in the reservation community. The second, Henry, engaged in a nation-building discourse that shifted attention away from past colonial military violence toward ongoing systemic oppression and the need for so- ciostructural change. These two interviews located HT at the heart of important tensions between globalization and indigeneity while opening the door for constructive but critical reflection within AI communities, as well as dia- logue with allied social scientists, to consider how emerging discourses surrounding behavioral health dis- parities might be helpful for promoting healing and/or so- ciostructural change.