Gone Joseph P
Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, and Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Transcult Psychiatry. 2024 Jun;61(3):325-338. doi: 10.1177/13634615211054998. Epub 2021 Dec 13.
Contemporary American Indians suffer from disproportionately high degrees of psychiatric distress. Mental health researchers and professionals, as well as American Indian community members, have consistently associated these disproportionate rates of distress with Indigenous historical experiences of European and Euro-American colonization. This emphasis on the impact of colonization and associated historical consciousness within tribal communities has occasioned increasingly widespread professional consideration of among Indigenous peoples. In contrast to personal experiences of a traumatic nature, the discourse of Indigenous historical trauma (IHT) weds the concepts of "historical oppression" and "psychological trauma" to explain community-wide risk for adverse mental health outcomes originating from the depredations of past colonial subjugation through intergenerational transmission of vulnerability and risk. Long before the emergence of accounts of IHT, however, many American Indian communities prized a markedly different form of narrative: the coup tale. By way of illustration, I explore various historical functions of this speech genre by focusing on -Gros Ventre war narratives, including their role in conveying vitality or life. By virtue of their recognition and celebration of agency, mastery, and vitality, war stories functioned as the discursive antithesis of IHT. Through comparative consideration of the coup tale and the trauma narrative, I propose an alternative framework for cultivating Indigenous community "survivance" rather than vulnerability based on these divergent discursive practices.
当代美国印第安人遭受着程度极高且不成比例的精神困扰。心理健康研究人员和专业人士，以及美国印第安社区成员，一直将这些不成比例的困扰率与欧洲及欧美殖民统治下的原住民历史经历联系在一起。部落社区内对殖民统治影响及相关历史意识的这种强调，引发了专业人士对原住民中此类情况越来越广泛的关注。与创伤性质的个人经历不同，原住民历史创伤（IHT）的论述将“历史压迫”和“心理创伤”的概念结合起来，以解释因过去殖民征服的掠夺通过代际传递的脆弱性和风险而导致的社区范围内心理健康不良后果的风险。然而，早在原住民历史创伤的描述出现之前，许多美国印第安社区就珍视一种截然不同的叙事形式：战功故事。作为例证，我通过聚焦格罗斯文特人的战争叙事，探讨了这种话语体裁的各种历史功能，包括它们在传达活力或生命力方面的作用。凭借对战功、掌控力和活力的认可与颂扬，战争故事起到了与原住民历史创伤论述相对立的话语作用。通过对战功故事和创伤叙事的比较思考，我基于这些不同的话语实践，提出了一个培养原住民社区“生存”而非脆弱性的替代框架。
