This paper aims to support individuals who seek to learn about Indigenous gender-based violence, as well as to understand intergenerational trauma from an Indigenous women’s perspective and experiences on decolonization and healing
Acknowledgements:
I begin by acknowledging all my relations who have dedicated their lives, for decades, to advocating, leading, and inspiring change to end violence against Indigenous women in Canada. This paper is dedicated to my late grandmother, my Nokomis, Irene, and my mother, Christie-Ann. I also dedicate this paper to all the women I have walked with and those who have walked with me to find a place of safety within myself, in space, in spirit, and beyond. Chii Miigwetch ~ Many thanks.
Note for the reader:
This work is Indigenous, relational-based research that enables me to walk a good way with a good mind on the good path – also referred to as Mino-Bimaadiziwin. As an Indigenous knowledge sharer (researcher), I center the work on deep, interconnected relationships with people, family, land, ancestors, and all living things, positioning these relationships as the foundation of reality, not merely a method of knowledge acquisition, but rather as the co-creation of knowledge through reciprocal relations with all creation. Centering myself in an Indigenous relational paradigm is a decolonizing method that requires profound self-reflection, accountability, and positionality for personal transformation. I use the terms “Indigenous” and “Indigenous People” to refer to those of the Original Stewards of the Land, that is, of Canada, and who are affected by colonization. This is decolonization in academic and institutional writing, asserting Indigenous voices and knowledge within literary contexts.
Everything starts with the water
***You are about to read a conversation regarding specific experiences of my healing journey. Please note that this paper shares sensitive subject matter related to Indigenous gender-based violence.
As an Anishinaabe, I’ve been taught that water is our first life – a living, spiritual being that is the source of all existence. We cannot survive without water, and we would not be physically here in the world if it were not for water. The teachings I received are that Creator uses water to create everything, and we all originate from it, including all living beings, humans, and the land. As an Anishinaabe woman, I have the role and responsibility to be a caretaker and protector of the water, a role deeply connected to my ability to bring life into the world and carry water within my sacred womb. Recognizing that our bodies are made of approximately 70% water, it is important that we care for the water within our bodies. We take care of our water by tending to it in ceremony.
The sweat lodge is a ceremony known for cleansing your heart, body, mind and spirit, and it can provide many functions of healing, clarity and empowerment. You cleanse these aspects of your being by entering the lodge. Heated rocks in the centre of the lodge have cedar water poured on them, creating a sauna-like environment. The lodge represents the womb of Mother Earth. We are inside, working on our water with sacred cedar water. Sweating has been known as a self-care, cleansing and healing process for many people and regions. For Anishinaabe, this is taking care of my water – as I sweat the water out of my body, I restore it with cedar water, drinking it and pouring it on my body, and I replenish my body with intentionality and spirit-led healing work with Elders. Wilson (2008) explains, “the purpose of any ceremony is to build stronger relationships or bridge the distance between aspects of our cosmos and ourselves. The research that we do as Indigenous people is a ceremony that allows us a raised level of consciousness and insight into our world. Let us go forward together with open minds and good hearts as we further take part in this ceremony” (p. 11). I take care of my water in order to take care of others in my life. You exit the lodge headfirst, wet from sweating, just like a baby exits the womb – we exit the lodge with our new water within our bodies, our hearts, bodies, minds and spirits restored and cleansed. It all starts with water, bringing life, taking care of oneself and others, and healing. 1
It is the year 2022, and I was talking to my therapist, explaining my current state of being, including the present experience of living my daily life. I noticed a look of curiosity on her face as the words came out of my mouth, as I tried to best describe my current state of mind and emotional experience. Words like enjoyable, restful, easy, and playful were the best descriptors I could think of, but I felt I was neither making sense nor accurately conveying myself. She could see that I was fumbling for words, almost as if English were a second language. Though I tried to articulate this state of being, it was nonetheless foreign to me, and I was barely able to find words for my present condition as a result.
She chuckled and said, Tamara, you’re one of the most well-spoken individuals I know, what is happening here? She looked at me in an inquisitive manner—waiting for my response. Suddenly, I felt confused because, for the first time, I was unable to find the words to accurately describe what I was feeling or explain it. I had never felt this way before, and this made me question if there was something wrong with me. I sat in silence as I thought for a moment about the times that I was in this space within my being—a place where I was present. I thought of times where I was entirely present; where I was conscious of my surroundings, aware of the smell of my home, the sound of deep belly laugher from my son, the smell of the icing as we decorate cupcakes, or the smell of my child’s head as he sleeps in my arms and we are in no rush to start our day. And more, the smell of a strong coffee in the morning as I sit on my deck watching the fog lift from the lake and the loons calling. These thoughts in mind, I started to explain to my therapist.
I don’t know if this makes sense. Maybe what I am trying to say is that I feel like I can breathe as I have never breathed before. Breathing in the sense that I am sleeping well at night, my son is happy, and we’re living a slower life. Breathing that I am happy, we got good, healthy food, we garden, have a nice home, clean clothes, and enjoy each other every day. I am breathing as I have never breathed before [I reiterate], maybe there is something wrong with me.
What makes you think there is something wrong with you? She asks. I replied that I didn’t know, that I had never felt like this before, and that I don’t know exactly how to explain it beyond saying it is certainly different. I feel more present than I have before in my life. I now see the little things in life that I may not have been able to see before (or perhaps have the opportunity to see) since I was in a state of constant alert. On alert for what needs to be done. Alert of what is not done. Alert to people who are relying on me. Alert to make sure that I was making people around me content. Alert to the expectations from work, school, family, or other things. Now I am finally sitting here, and I am learning so much about my son and his little quirks, which are showing me my own quirks, in turn. I am learning how amazing it is to be a mother and to love my son, see him, hold him, smell him, and learn with him. It is all different than what it used to be.
How is it different? Can you explain that to me? Maybe the word ‘different’ isn’t the right one. I am trying to understand if this is how life is supposed to be. Is there something wrong? Am I missing something?
It sounds like you are trying to describe yourself experiencing perhaps calmness or peace. Now, why are you, or at least it appears you are, having difficulty understanding or articulating this experience or experiences? I sat in silence once again and thought about what she had just said. Peace, heh? Well, I would never have thought of peace as an experience! As I reflected on this, I began to wonder whether what I was experiencing was typical day-to-day life for people in Canada. This ‘peace’ my therapist talks about. You know, you see those individuals who read books, journal, work out, hike, play with their kids, attend their kids’ extracurriculars, sew their kid’s costume, make muffins or cookies for the school bake sale, pack those cute lunches with the smiley face on the banana and maybe a note for their kid to find, and who are out the door every morning as part of a smooth routine to school and work. I never witnessed this lifestyle growing up. It is so foreign to me that it always fascinates me. Is it real, or all a front? A front of acting like you have it all together, figured out, and have a routine in life. Maybe they are robots? Suddenly, it hit me that, for these individuals I am talking about, perhaps peace is their default.
I said, Shit! It is about to get real in my healing work.
Introduction
This paper aims to support individuals who seek to learn about Indigenous gender-based violence, as well as to understand intergenerational trauma from an Indigenous women’s perspective and experiences on decolonization and healing. These goals must be grounded in culturally safe and informed ways that are the fundamentals of the Indigenous worldview. The learning in this paper can be applied to anyone in the helping field (service providers) interested in decolonization and in enhancing their practice to be Indigenous trauma-informed. The learning will also be of assistance when addressing Indigenous gender based violence while working with Indigenous women. My intention is to encourage knowledge production by activating embodied learning experiences. I do this by reading my stories and experiences to bring out the storytelling and story-listening relationship that sits at the core of circular embodied learning. In this way, my hope is that this learning encourages our allies to embody an Indigenous worldview and provides an Indigenous lens to inform their practices.
This introduction provides the reader with intentions and context. To understand the importance of helping Indigenous children and Indigenous women from an Indigenous worldview, we must first understand the Indigenous context and experience. After all, let’s not forget that help itself is, for the most part, grounded in westernized policies, protocols, and tools, which means that Indigenous peoples are taking up the work of expanding these resources by integrating Indigenous knowledge, experiences, and teachings into them. The integration of Indigenous epistemology and perspectives into the Western helping field (for example, social work) did not weave together easily, and indeed, some may argue that it is still a present struggle (Hart, 2002; Linklater, 2020). The main source of conflict, which creates a tenuous relationship, is that, within the helping field, when non-Indigenous families were struggling and crying for help, their calls were historically answered. Meanwhile, long before the cries for help by non-Indigenous families, there were screams for help from Indigenous families that were not answered and ignored (Baskin, 2022).
Hart (2002) explains that social work (the helping field) continues to oppress and reinforce colonial violence against Indigenous Peoples. This persists because many policies, models, and protocols lack an Indigenous worldview, understanding, and culture. Similarly, Weaver (2000) argues that services in the helping field (such as social work, child welfare, counselling, and support services) are extensions of colonial violence, where “Native people share stories from their childhoods of social workers who came and took them away or took their relatives, in the midst of tears, screams, and much bewilderment. I cannot recollect ever hearing a story of a social worker who came in during a time of need and used advocacy or activism skills to make a positive difference” (Weaver, 2000, p. 14). While much work remains to decolonize the helping field, it is important to recognize the need to confront the history of Indigenous Peoples’ genocide as a starting point for strengthening understanding of contemporary injustices and oppressive systemic practices. By understanding the history and ongoing mechanisms of colonialism against Indigenous Peoples in Canada, you can then identify Indigenous risk factors that reflect the realities of imposed violence that Indigenous individuals face daily.
The reasons for this are due to the complex history of colonialism and recurring re-traumatization due to violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada. These experiences must be understood as intersectional that stem from historical and contemporary manifestations of violence due to colonial harm, dispossession, racism and systemic discrimination that perpetuate social and well-being disparities among Indigenous Peoples in Canada (Cullen et al., 2022; Griffiths et al., 2016; NI MMIWG, 2019; RCAP, 1996). Indigenous women’s experiences of violence have direct links to how heteropatriarchal policies disrupted and continue to disrupt Indigenous women’s roles of leadership, motherhood, safety, and traditional roles and responsibilities (NI MMIWG, 2019; RCAP, 1996; TRC, 2015; UN, 1979). This relationship between high rates of violence and social determinants of health demonstrates that the experiences of violence against Indigenous women are complex, far-reaching, layered and often the intergenerational aspect of cumulative violence is invisible and not talked about enough (Bernard, 2018; Kirmayer et al., 2014; Palmater, 2016; Paradies, 2016).
Before moving deeper into this paper, let’s make note of the learning that will be embarked on in this paper. These questions will be explored: What does it mean to be an Indigenous woman with family members listed under the known numbers of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) in Canada? How does historical and contemporary colonial gender-based violence (in all its forms) influence the standing of Indigenous women today? And finally, how do we deepen our understanding of the violence against Indigenous women? Through this process, we will gain insight into the complexities of Indigenous trauma, grief, empowerment, and healing that I embark upon in the pursuit of challenging contemporary thought processes by breaking cycles and barriers, and encouraging a shift through sharing stories, learning, and healing work. We will critically analyze the impacts of colonial violence on Indigenous women, including identity, health, motherhood, social wellbeing and wellness. But first, let me introduce myself and let our embodied learning journey begin.
My social location
Boozhoo, I am an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) and Scottish woman. My Anishinaabe name is Waasaya nii Migizikwe, which means Shining Eagle Woman. I am a member of Kiasheke Zaaging Anishinaabek (Gull Bay First Nation), located off Lake Nipigon in Northern Ontario, Canada. I only lived the early years of my life in my community, and even then, it was challenging. My mother had me with my Scottish non-status father and feared exclusion from the community as a result. When I was born, she left my father’s information blank on my birth certificate. I was born in 1987, just 2 years after the 1985 passing of Bill C-31, which amended the Indian Act to enable Indigenous women to regain their Indian status rights and maintain their status if marriage with a non-status man occurred. Infuriatingly, however, the rights were not passed down to their children, but if a status Indigenous man had children with a non-status woman, their children would get Indian status, including the mother. Understandably, my mother lived in fear that I would lose my Indian status rights and chose to leave my father’s information blank.
Since first contact, there has always been inequality in the treatment and understanding of Indigenous peoples, and especially Indigenous women. Aggressive discourse of cultural genocide and policies of assimilation were in full force, removing children from their families and communities and sending them to the Residential Schools as early as the 1600s, with the last school closing in 1996 (White & Peters, 2009). My grandmother Irene and mother Christie-Ann are survivors of the Residential School system and the 60s scoop. Residential schools were boarding schools for Indigenous children that were operated by the Canadian Government and the Church. Thousands of Indigenous children suffered tremendous amounts of pain and suffering in the form of sexual, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual abuse. The likelihood of survival for these institutions was low, with a general assessment of the brutal conditions indicating a 50% survival rate (BC, 2014).
Addressing the traumatic experiences of these Residential Schools was done in isolation for many survivors due to the loneliness and grief for the life they had with their families and communities, leaving lasting psychological effects (Anderson, 2010; Bombay, 2014; Hanson, 2020; TRC, 2015). Isolation became part of the narrative of trying to move forward since for many decades our nation did not acknowledge this dark history of Canada, instead hid it, therefore silencing survivors and their families. The roots of family violence and intimate partner violence within Indigenous families and communities are rooted within the colonial impact of the Residential School System, which fractured and continues to fracture the roles and responsibilities, dodems and clan systems, governance, and social organization across generations (Bernard, 2018; Bombay, 2014). The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is documenting the history and the impacts of the Residential School System, including identifying the children in the burial sites who did not return home and died at these institutions.
The 60s scoop was a period between the 1960s-1980s where policies were enacted to enable child welfare authorities and social workers to take or ‘scoop up’ Indigenous children from their families and homes and then place them into foster homes within Canada and the United States. These acts of continued dispossession of Indigenous children created barriers for many children and youth to return home and to reconnect with their culture (NCCAH, 2018). My mother, after leaving an all-girls Residential School in Toronto, upon her return home, was scooped up and placed with another family in northern Ontario.
Despite efforts to erase our culture and language, my grandmother was a fluent Ojibwe speaker, and my mother took pride in being a ceremonial woman. Recognizing that my mother is a survivor means she also came with her struggles. I remember she was sober for a good handful of years, during which I had the honour of learning from her, hitting the powwow trails, doing beadwork, making regalia, and hanging out with her cool female friends from Lakehead University, who soon became my aunties. My mom struggled with substance misuse and alcoholism, which was close to home for her since her mother, my grandmother, struggled with alcoholism. I don’t want to get into the traumas I have experienced in this paper, as I am saving that for a different piece, but for now, let’s say that I have been through a lot and I made it out alive.
My mother relapsed when I was about 8 or 9. I lived with my father at the time, and no one knew my mother had relapsed because she was an active addict who still attended community events and ceremonies and worked as a teacher. I moved back in with my mother at 12, and that is when I learned how severe the addictions were and how drinking had consumed my mother’s life. I became the primary caregiver for my little brother (4yo) and sister (6yo). That lasted for about 8-9 months before the police and CAS showed up. My mom had a tendency to leave us for 1-2 weeks at a time, and this time, when CAS and the police showed up, it was about a month, maybe a little longer. Regardless, it was traumatizing because I knew not to tell anyone that my mother had left and that I was taking care of my siblings. I knew that if anyone found out that my siblings and I had been left alone, we would be separated since we had different fathers. My father came and got me right away. I remember crying and screaming and begging him to take my siblings, but he was not in a financial position to do it. I could see the heartache in his eyes as he took me away. As time passed, I did not reconnect with my sister and brother until I was in college. The fracturing of family lines continued intergenerationally.
I struggled for a long time trying to have a relationship with my mother. My second mother figure was my grandmother Irene. We used to cuddle and lie in bed watching Unsolved Mysteries for hours, and every so often she would slip me 5 bucks to run to Mike’s Mart to pick up Miss Vickie’s Sea Salt and Malt Vinegar chips. I would run back into her bedroom with chips and Pepsi, get back under the quilted blankets, and watch our crime shows. I slept with my grandmother until the day I left for college, and even when I came back to see her, I would still sleep with her from time to time. I know this may sound odd for some, but for many Indigenous families, we co-slept with our Elders, parents or siblings. Some would argue that this is not a safe practice, but in fact, when I reflect on my childhood, this was the safest space for me. This space of warmth, cuddling my grandmother under the quilted blankets, is where I learned so much about my granny’s experiences, dreams and hopes.
My grandmother held onto a lot of pain that she survived in her life. You could see it in her eyes when she was reflecting on the past or sharing a story. In the same breath, though, when she was happy and excited, those brown eyes sparkled. I was very fortunate to have the time with her, and when I moved back home to do my master’s, she supported my research by sharing stories of her mother, Jane Bernard, one of the known numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. This experience changed my life, and in some small way, it changed my grandmother because she was no longer carrying the weight of the pain alone. You could see in her eyes relief and a sense of being understood and seen for the first time in a long time. I saw my grandmother, a little girl, talking about her mother’s memories.
Through storytelling and story-sharing with my grandmother, we learned about one another. Through this learning, we also healed. For the first time, my grandmother shared stories of her experiences at the Residential School, but also her remembrances of her mother beyond the event of her death. She longed for that mother-daughter relationship, and in this way, I understood her because I also grieved and longed for one. Recognizing the continued fracturing of female relationships for Indigenous women results in a continuation of searching for identity, sense of belonging, unity, worth, roles and responsibilities. My grandmother would often talk about my mom and say how she misses her. I often wondered, is this the way we live, missing those that are still alive? Grieving for those who are living but gone due to addictions?
Wait. Let me restate that.
Grieving for those who are living but not present due to trauma. Addiction is a manifestation of trauma, after all. I learned, as an Indigenous woman, that if we are not worried about ourselves and our own wellbeing or safety, then we are also worrying about the safety and wellbeing of those that we love. But when do we, as Indigenous Women, get the time to relax? Breathe? Be present? Is it possible? Or is that we live our lives in constant worry and survival mode?
Peace is a default
As I sat with my thoughts from my last therapy session, still in fascination that perhaps what I am experiencing is what a healthy and balanced life is. Perhaps I began to realize and learn that I have been living my entire life in survival mode until now. Survival mode is when prolonged trauma, unresolved stress or grief, has influenced your daily functionality of work, parenting, wellness and more. It can impact your ability to take care of your basic human needs, leading to struggles with emotional regulation, memory challenges, burnout, and fatigue as signs and symptoms of survival mode (Benzo and Magi, 2015). A couple of days after my therapy session, I decided to go to yoga to work through my thoughts. As I transitioned from my ‘dead bug pose’ to ‘supported bridge’ pose, I lay there listening to the instructor and the calm music.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale.
(Instructor says: Become present. Find the space between the thoughts to be present.)
Inhale.
Exhale.
I start to feel complete relaxation. This exact feeling of calm or peace rushed over me. I allowed myself to dive into it and can feel the shift in energy within my body, my pose deepening in stretch, and my breath slowing. My eyes close, and now I feel in tune with my body and elongating my stretch. Then suddenly,
POP!
A thought surged through my mind without a moment to pause and re-gather my peace. I could not help but think: Did my mother or my grandmother ever experience this feeling? Did they ever get the chance to shut off their thoughts? I reposition the yoga box to deepen my bridge pose and stretch out my legs, opening my chest and deepening my breathing as I sit in this thought. Yet, before I could even process what was happening,
There were tears running down my face
INHALE.
EXHALE.
But did they get to experience peace? I thought. More tears came.
INHALE.
EXHALE. (BREATHE, TAMARA, BREATHE)
I learned that what is perhaps a baseline of ‘peace’ or ‘calm’ in someone’s life is what I had to work towards. Since the moment I was born, my first breath, I was thrown into chaos. I struggled to understand any environment, person, or lifestyle that was not chaotic, running with my head cut off, violent, and unhealthy. I had to work towards peace. I didn’t even know I was working towards it because when I finally experienced it, I didn’t know what it was. And now I sit in it and relish it. I realize that peace is my new default. I protect my default. I often wonder whether my mother ever felt peace. Would she recognize it if she did? Or would it be a confusing state of being (like it was for me)? I couldn’t put into words what I was feeling until my therapist identified it. But how could this be? I am 35 years old, and I am finally experiencing peace. I have lived 35 years of turbulence, chaos, and an unpredictable lifestyle that changed in fleeting moments, leaving me to process one moment to the next. I was in survival mode. I was in survival mode for 35 years of my life. Who the fuck am I? Who the fuck am I if I’m not in survival mode? Who the fuck is the real Tamara?
Recognizing that the Indigenous women in my life were frequently in survival mode because of the legacy of Residential Schools, the 60’s Scoop, domestic and community violence, sexism, racism, discrimination, grief, and oppression, I have come to understand the importance of my healing work in experiencing the privilege of peace. Patricia Monture-Angus (1995) explains that “violence is not just a mere incident in the lives of Aboriginal women. Violence does not just span a given number of years. And it is in our histories” (p. 170). The peace that is a default for many non-Indigenous individuals and families is what many other Indigenous women and I worked towards and continue to work towards. Perhaps experiencing peace is essentially a privilege that many generations before me did not have the opportunity to experience, grasp, or articulate. So, I question: is it really a privilege, or a basic human right and need? If it is basic, why can’t it be more accessible? Then I reply to myself: Why? Because this requires safety, recent research has indicated that Indigenous individuals are nearly twice as likely to be victims of violence compared to non-Indigenous individuals (Government of Canada, 2024) and that Indigenous women are 13 times more likely to experience violence compared to non-Indigenous women (NI MMIWG, 2019). Safety is self-determined and varies from one survivor to another. What may look or feel like safety for many might not be the sense of safety that Indigenous women have access to or are hesitant to access due to systemic discrimination and oppression. Sometimes, at the very individualistic level, our safety is abandoning the self to be safe. To be safe for ourselves, and at times our children, we must abandon the self as an act of safety. But what does abandoning the self actually mean?
Abandoning the self to survive
The constant need to abandon self in environments to survive is the first traumatic experience for many Indigenous Peoples since first contact. Self-abandonment begins by not listening to or following one’s gut feeling in order to protect oneself from harm, and it can happen due to traumatic experiences, genetically encoded remembered responses (inter-generationally), anxiety, environmental or fear (Bombay, 2014; Mate, 2012). Dr Gabor Mate explains that trauma begins when one must disconnect from oneself. Mate shares how, as a child, he had to abandon himself to maintain his relationship with his mother during the Nazi occupation, and how this act of self-abandonment or self-sacrifice rippled into adulthood as a human behaviour pattern.
Indigenous Peoples were not seen as a priority but as a problem in the eyes of the Canadian government (Hanson, 2020). Various forms of colonial violence, oppression, and assimilative methods were employed by the Canadian government through the Residential School system, sexism in the Indian Act, birth alerts, the 60s scoop, and the child welfare system. These mechanisms of violent assimilation, dispossession and disenfranchisement are fundamental to the overt removals of Indigenous children, infants, and youth from their families and communities, resulting in fractured relationships and attachments to family and culture, and, more importantly, a disconnection from self (Ogden and Tutty, 2023; Wilson and Yellowbird, 2006). To survive, we had to abandon self.
Let’s unpack this – while being abused in the Residential School system, Indigenous individuals abandoned themselves. Being scooped from our family and community made us abandon ourselves. Being placed in foster home after foster home with no consistent secure attachments or relationships formed, created an abandoned selfhood. If you find yourself witnessing violence in your home as a child, you must abandon yourself. If you are abused by your partner and stay with him because of the children, you have abandoned yourself. If your family and community members say that your struggle (intimate partner violence) is not that bad, you consider abandoning yourself to be agreeable and safe. When the police do not believe you and fail to protect, you abandon yourself because your honest reality is undermined and misunderstood. You thought it was love because he treated you so well, but now we are being exploited and using our bodies to pay off debt, so we abandon ourselves.
You are experiencing lateral violence at work, but can’t speak up for fear of being fired, we become inauthentic, and thus, we abandon ourselves. You are experiencing lateral violence in your community, but you can’t speak up because they are a member of the chief and counsel, we must then abandon self. You are experiencing abuse in your relationship, but you don’t speak up due to fear of CAS being called and don’t want your children to experience what you experienced as a child with CAS, then you abandon yourself, and mask your reality. Perhaps you are in a high leadership role and want to make a difference for Indigenous peoples, but experience sexism, racism, and oppression, whilst not being allowed to speak on issues, then we all abandon our real selves. Indigenous women experience significant disparities and are largely silenced, which perpetuates an invisibility and oppression.
I found myself constantly living a life where I abandoned my inner thoughts, feelings, and instincts in conversations, relationships, and institutions to survive and meet their expectations, demands, and needs. I tried to make everyone around me content while fighting a war within myself, even though I knew deep down that the experiences I was witnessing or first-hand involved in were not okay. In 2019, I left my unhealthy marriage and found myself rebuilding my life in isolation as a single mom. For the most part, many family and friends thought I was crazy to leave my marriage, and when I shared, I sometimes got comments like “he doesn’t hit you” or “it could be worse”. Sadly, for a couple of years, I dated unhealthy men because that was my norm. Like other Indigenous women, abusive relationships are difficult to navigate, exit and break cycles (Brunette, 2015; Ogden, 2023). That was my baseline. I did not know any better, and healthy men were foreign to me because they were not role-modelled or set as an example in my childhood. My brain was programmed from childhood that this is how men treat their women and children. In time, however, I saw the cycle before my eyes and knew I had to change. I refused to be a victim and instead chose to be my own hero. Therapy session after therapy session, sweat after sweat, women’s circle after women’s circle, I started to see the pattern that I was not alone. Other Indigenous women like me, mostly single moms, were experiencing abusive, unhealthy, and toxic relationships.
Gabor Mate (2022) explains that we always meet people at the same level of emotional development or trauma resolution. Think of it as levelling each other out. However, if one person starts growing and doing healing work and the other doesn’t, there are two outcomes. Either the individual who started their healing work stops and returns to their previous self, what they know and are familiar with, or the individual continues the healing work, and they separate on different paths in life. This can be applied in personal intimate relationships, family, friendships, or the workplace. In a way, Mate is explaining a teaching I have received from an Elder: you can only walk with those you are helping, dating, or love as far as you have walked yourself. Each pathway to grow and heal is hard, and to continue a cycle is hard.
For many Indigenous individuals, like myself, being a cycle breaker is not easy. I decided to stay single and go on dates here and there for years. I learned to set boundaries to protect myself; little did I know at the time that this was the beginning of feeding my default of peace in my life. I will no longer stay, ever again, in a space, conversation, or relationship, a work environment or institution that requires me to abandon myself. I started to see that whenever I pointed out toxic behaviour in my personal or professional relationships, many did not like it when accountability and boundaries were placed on them or in front of them. That realization taught me so much about not being a people-pleaser and about learning to hold space for myself in difficult conversations and spaces that may feel like walking on eggshells. I started role modelling this practice with the women I walk with, sometimes even writing out statements for discussions with the people in their lives to set boundaries and hold them accountable in good ways, and not to steer away from boundaries, especially when it comes to exiting violence. This healing work rippled into my professional relationships, where I found myself setting boundaries and holding individuals accountable for unhealthy behaviours. As an Indigenous woman, my reaction to their toxic behaviour became more offensive to them than their behaviour of lateral violence. How is it that I became the offender when trying to address lateral violence? I was told to remain silent on the issue, otherwise I would be replaced. Now, as a single mother who is breaking cycles and has less than a handful of healthy people in her life, I cannot afford to lose my job because I have nothing to fall back on.
Abandon self. Need to Survive. Need to provide for my Child.
I wish I could say that I stood my ground and did not abandon myself. I wish I could say it got better after this; instead, it got worse. Kirmayer, Brass, and Tait (2000) explain that this type of behaviour is intergenerational trauma, overt and shared as collective experiences that have become integrated into the “social relations, practices, and institutions” (p. 611). The gaslighting to make you believe that your reactions to lateral violence constitute an overreaction or being “dramatic”. You start to spiral, even to understand what is reality and what is not. I became so consumed by the toxic energy and violence that I had to take a leave from my job. During my leave, I slept. And when I say I slept, I mean I SLEPT. I would only get out of bed when my son was home from school to cook supper, bath time, and play. This is when I began to make the connections about how common it is for Indigenous women to not only experience violence with intimate partners, family, and community, but at workplaces too. Are we ever safe? And why do we tolerate it? I wondered. Well, as Mate (2012) explained, we default to our childhood abandonment of self.
Making meaning
Continuous exposure to trauma creates complex unconscious psychological stresses that contribute to chronic diseases and illnesses such as cancer, addictions, depression, anxiety, and inflammation (Mate, 2014). As mentioned, I am the first in my family not to attend a Residential School. I am also the first generation to have the right to parent without child welfare taking my child, and I am doing the work of breaking cycles of addiction to substance use and alcoholism. Research indicates that a relationship between childhood trauma and substance dependency among young adults and adults is prevalent among those exposed to chronic adversities and trauma (Mate, 2010). Childhood adversities, such as the Canadian Residential School System, increased the risk of addictions and chronic diseases for Indigenous Peoples. The Residential School System ingrained severe pain and suffering in the minds, spirits, hearts, and bodies of Indigenous children for hundreds of years, generation after generation (Bombay, 2014). This pain may be inescapable because it is layered, generation by generation, within families, communities, and nations.
In my 20 years of anti-violence work in Ontario, for example, I have not met a single Indigenous woman who has not experienced violence, whether sexual, domestic, intimate partner, family, community, lateral, or systemic. These experiences of violence are trauma. When Indigenous women rise up to address these issues of violence, often we are silenced or ignored. Kenny (2006) explains that Indigenous women and girls exist in a ‘double-bind’ within their participation in changing their communities, government, lives, families, work environments, and simultaneously being silenced in fundamental decisions, initiatives, directives, and policies. Even when Indigenous women seek support, such as from a social worker, it can become an extension of colonial oppression and a traumatic experience. I know of Indigenous mothers who have child welfare involved, getting support, but live in fear that their child will be taken if they share too much or admit they need help. Indigenous women aren’t only healing from the violence and oppression they endured, but also from the ways they were treated when seeking help and support.
Indigenous mothering is a role of leadership that is the heart of many families and communities. Within the Indigenous worldview, “Aboriginal mothering is recognized as extending beyond the biological act of giving birth and involves a multitude of roles and relationships across times, spaces, and generations… it is a complex web of relational practices, was, and is fundamental to life” (NCCAH, 2013, p. 3). Hart (2002) explains that social work continues to reinforce colonial ideologies and attitudes against Indigenous People since the model lacks cultural sensitivity. There is a gap in understanding the multiple and intersecting roles many Indigenous women take on within their families, communities, and workplaces, and in understanding how to support Indigenous women and mothers when it feels like too much due to the constant hypervigilance as a survival response (Wuest & Merritt-Gray, 2001) and protective surveillance of children (Herland, 2020).
I remember coming down the stairs of our duplex home and hearing my mother crying at the kitchen table. I grabbed my Barbie, which was lying on the floor at the base of the staircase. At this time in our lives, I remember child welfare or social workers coming into our home, interviewing me, and making my mom very stressed. She was crying into her hands, weeping and kept saying, they don’t understand me, they don’t understand me. I remember holding onto my Barbie and slowly approaching my mom. I asked, “What do they not understand, Mama?” And she stopped crying, wiped her face, tried to smile, and replied, “It’s nothing, Tamara, it’s nothing.” As a child, I did not understand what was happening, and it was not until adulthood that I reflected on this time and the timeline of when my mother relapsed. I do remember workers visiting our home from time to time and asking me about my mom. What I did not know until I was an adult is that my mother was trying to seek support for her trauma as a survivor of the Residential School and 60’s scoop system. However, as we all know, the history of the Residential School did not come into full fruition within the education system until the mid 2000’s, and even more so in 2020, when the little Indigenous bodies were recovered from a previous Residential School site in the province of British Columbia. For the most part, I was never taught about Canada’s dark history of genocide against Indigenous Peoples until I went to college in 2005.
Now, back to my story, this was in the early 1990s, and so it made sense why there were not adequate supports or services for my mother that she felt resonated or understood what she was struggling with. Sadly, we are still struggling with Indigenous culturally safe programs and supports in present day; however, we have improved since the 1990s. The struggle stems from a lack of funding, consistent long-term funding, and recognition that Indigenous healing work needs more than the fast-food pace of 21 days of treatment. Since most social work, medical, mental health services and supports historically were not centred on helping Indigenous Peoples, why do we continue to employ models, frameworks, assessments and practices that are not working? I ask this question because assessment tools created for existing Intimate Partner Violence/domestic violence or domestic human trafficking all lack Indigenous aspects of risk. You may be wondering: why aren’t these tools Indigenized yet? We are in the year 2025. Here’s my quick answer – many of the tools, assessments, and frameworks are developed based on the understanding and theories of a Westernized concept of trauma and based on non-Indigenous populations to standardize the tools.
There is a gap within existing literature that conceptualizes Indigenous trauma to be employed as a baseline for informing resources to help Indigenous peoples. In fact, Nelson and Wilson (2017) argued that the majority of existing literature on intergenerational trauma or trauma failed to distinguish between trauma from colonial violence and oppression or trauma resulting from other environmental and systemic effects such as poverty, mental health, substance misuse and so forth. I argue that those environmental effects are also manifestations of trauma surviving colonial violence; however, the core of Indigenous trauma is understanding the history and impacts of colonialism and genocide. For instance, I have started to indigenize the risk factors to enhance my understanding of the baseline of trauma and risk, as part of my assessment tools for Intimate Partner Violence that I am working with. Intimate partner violence is threatened or carried out, causing physical or sexual harm to a current or previous intimate partner (Finkel & Eckhardt, 2013). I ask my clients – survivor and/or perpetrator – the following questions in addition to the risk assessment tool:
• If they or their parents/grandparents attended a Residential School;
• If they or their parents were part of the 60’s scoop;
• If they or their parents were involved with the child welfare system;
• If they have a loved one, friend or community member as one among MMIWG;
These risk factors inform me about the depth of trauma within the family unit and my starting point for holistic wrap-around services and supports for the survivor and their family.
I advocate that when CAS is involved in an IPV case, when a woman is safe, her children are safe. We need to stop primarily focusing on the safety of children in IPV because children deserve to have their mother, and the mother deserves to have her children. It is critically important to hold perpetrators accountable and not place all the burden on the mother, who is the primary caregiver. Moreover, recognizing that the questions noted aid in understanding the question, “How many times has the individual abandoned themselves?”, helps clarify the nature of self-abandonment.
Self-abandonment stems from childhood trauma and ripples into adulthood, shaping behavioural patterns. It is important to connect how self-abandonment reinforces women to return to their abuser. It’s a familiar cycle, known and therefore can feel safer than the unknown. I know this may sound wild and not make sense to some – and to be clear, I am also not saying that Indigenous women do not know better—in fact, they do. But it is about reprogramming their brains from childhood to stop repeating cycles of familiarity (groomed by Residential Schools) and to learn to recognize that perhaps those feelings of normal are actually unhealthy, unsafe, and violent, and to allow their inner child not to abandon self for survival mode but to take action to break the cycle. I know it is a lot easier said than done because I am myself a survivor, worker, advocate, and educator in the field.
Regardless, Indigenous women are the experts of their lives, and they need to be in a place of safety to tap into being present, recognize their cycle of self-abandonment, and start the healing work. Many do not have adequate access to, or if so, the time and support to do, this deep healing work, or again, lack of funding. I hope that writing and sharing my stories and experiences will provide readers with opportunities to learn how to enhance their practice as helpers, advocates, or educators. I hope to encourage a shift away from decolonization that leads readers not to problematize Indigenous women they are working with, but to support them towards wellness, safety, healing, and wellbeing. This shift is intended to encourage a change in perspective to recognize when policies, frameworks, theories, or practices do not align with Indigenous women and where, in fact, they reinforce oppression and enhance vulnerability to violence. Ask yourself – What am I doing to strengthen the independence of the Indigenous woman and her family, or am I staying on my standardized list that is potentially deficient in focus? It is recognizing that for an Indigenous woman to learn and navigate the system can be an oppressive and violent experience within itself. Ask yourself – how will you support an Indigenous woman when she is experiencing racism and discrimination within the system? What can you do differently today? How can you be a better ally?
In closing…
Recognizing that the ongoing acts of violence against Indigenous women are a contemporary and ongoing form of colonialism that significantly impacts and contributes to the social conditions of their lives. Residential schools, child intervention systems, and lateral violence and trauma have a profound impact on Indigenous women, resulting in patterns of intergenerational trauma. Therefore, violence against Indigenous women must be understood as a consequence of colonialism and an ongoing act of genocide that many Indigenous women, like myself, are fighting against every day of their lives.
In short, The Parts of Me Missing is the privilege of being present that I did not reach until the age of 35. I missed a lot of my life and perhaps my son’s. The ability to breathe between moments of fleeting thoughts racing through my mind comes in few or between a few. Otherwise, my mind is constantly consumed by fear. The Parts of Me Missing is having that mother-daughter relationship. The Parts of Me Missing is not having witnessed and role modelled what Anishinaabe mothering is. Part of Me Missing is the fracture of the matrilineal line in my family due to colonial violence and the loss of my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Constantly double-checking the locks on my doors and windows before going to bed or leaving my home to work for the day. The constant fear of men in positions of power making unhealthy and unsafe decisions that leave me constantly in fear of losing my job if I stand up for myself and speak up. The constant need to look over my shoulder when I take my dog for a walk or a jog, when I’m in the parking lot or walking down the street. The need to share my location with my safe person so they know my whereabouts at all times.
The Parts of Me Missing are knowing that my son will never meet his grandmother or auntie. The Parts of Me Missing are swallowed by grief and constant longing that my mother got sober instead of dying from an accidental overdose—an overdose that could have been avoided long ago if society knew how to support my mother when she was screaming for help. The Parts of Me Missing is that my grandmother was sober for more than a handful of years before she passed away. She could have lived longer if she had been given adequate support and care after surviving the Residential Schools and witnessing her mother being taken. You see here, colonial violence took the women in my life. They could only stay strong for so long. This is Indigenous gender-based violence. It is complex and intergenerational, and it advocates for the indigenization of all tools, frameworks, and assessments to authentically address violence, support healing work, and drive systemic change.
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