Nonprofit reaching out to educate on historical trauma effects on youth

WAKPALA TOWNSHIP, S.D. (AP) – A budding nonprofit in Rapid City is reaching out to schools across South Dakota to educate the educators about historical trauma and how past misfortunes and mistreatment of Native Americans can stunt the development of their young.

Freedom Lodge started its inaugural training sessions last month in the Smee School District on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, the Rapid City Journal reported.

“The schools are so central to Native American philosophy and the way people rally around their kids,” Freedom Lodge Executive Director Ruby Gibson said.

Mandy West is the social worker and student counselor at Wakpala High School, where Gibson has been training educators, parents and other members of the community. West leaped at the chance to have Gibson come speak at the school when she heard her talking about historical trauma at the Lakota Nations Education Conference in Rapid City in December.

“I didn’t think about it the same way until I heard Dr. Gibson talk about it,” West said. "Our population at our school is about 99 percent Native American, so the topic itself speaks to our students and our community.”

The way Gibson and other experts define it, historical trauma is the sum of a culture’s accumulated traumatic events that reverberate into the present. Historical trauma can weigh heavily on the minds and emotions of people within that culture, leading to the continuation of a downward cycle through the generations. For Native Americans, and specifically members of the Oglala Sioux tribe, one example of historical trauma is the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.

Gibson said: “How do you find homeostasis” – maintaining normal internal stability – “after experiencing radical ethnocide?”

That’s the working question that Gibson addresses every day in her work at the Freedom Lodge offices at 809 South St., suite 207, in Rapid City, where the group offers free historical-trauma counseling sessions to members of the Oglala Sioux tribe.

“There are so many layers to it, so many stories, so many struggles,” Gibson said. “So many people who have lost their cultural identity.”

West identified historical trauma in her own experiences growing up.

“My parents were both raised in boarding schools, which was a military setting,” West said. “What do they see when they get there? More trauma. And what do they bring home with them when they come back?”

Gibson hopes that by taking her message to South Dakota’s schools, knowledge of historical trauma and how to treat it will spread from the classroom, into the home, and throughout the communities in which she speaks.

“We feel that the educators and children in schools have the greatest potential to be able to thrive,” Gibson said.

West agrees with Gibson’s thinking. She sees the traumas, both past and present, which the students at her school endure. She hopes that putting a name to the pain will help ease it.

“We have in our area, on this particular reservation, experienced several youth suicides,” West said. “In situations where kids come to school and find out a classmate, someone they know, a relative has committed suicide, they may feel some guilt or feel they maybe should have reached out. They get stuck in the thoughts of `What I could have done.’ Then they relate to whatever the despair is.”

Convinced her lessons can help, Gibson said that if teachers take a few minutes every class to do the exercises Freedom Lodge offers, they “can radically change the atmosphere of the class from one of chaos to one of learning.”

“We cannot think our way out of fear,” Gibson added. “But we can feel our way out.”

Gibson’s first training session in Wakpala High School was on March 17, with a second scheduled for April 4, a third from June 2 to June 4, and a fourth on June 9.

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Information from: Rapid City Journal, http://www.rapidcityjournal.com