Trauma is not only about events, but also about how they are understood within a culture. For Indigenous peoples, ancestral stories and communal practices can buffer the effects of disaster, while disruptions fracture lifeways and deepen loss. These contrasts reveal how meaning-making, kinship, and resilience shape the legacy of trauma.
The eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, was the most destructive volcanic event in U.S. history. Triggered by a magnitude 5.1 earthquake, the eruption caused a massive landslide, reduced the mountain’s height by over 1,300 feet, and killed 57 people. Ash blanketed several states, and the blast reshaped entire ecosystems (U.S. Geological Survey, n.d.).
Yet for many Indigenous communities nearby, including the Yakama and Klickitat, the eruption was not unexpected. Stories passed down through generations spoke of the mountain’s potential to erupt. This cultural memory helped frame the disaster not as a rupture, but as part of a long-understood cycle—potentially buffering its psychological impact.
In contrast, the Exxon Valdez oil spill on March 24, 1989, released over 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, contaminating more than 1,300 miles of coastline (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, n.d.). For Alaska Native communities, whose lifeways depend on subsistence fishing and hunting, the spill deeply disrupted cultural and environmental relationships. Unlike a natural disaster, the oil spill was sudden, human-caused, and preventable—making its emotional and cultural toll even more profound.
How can this be? Trauma isn’t composed solely of the event itself, but how it’s culturally understood, supported, and integrated. The Indigenous populations near Mt. St. Helen’s were prepared through ancestral stories—the eruption was not a rupture, but a fulfillment of communal memory.
Meanwhile, the oil spill interrupted subsistence lifeways central to Alaska Native identity and passed down for generations. The trauma lies in the event and in the disruption of cultural continuity.
These differences reflect deeper patterns of historical and intergenerational trauma. For many Indigenous communities, colonization, land dispossession, and forced assimilation have shaped how trauma is experienced and remembered. Yet within those same communities, story, kinship, and cultural practice often offer protection and pathways to healing.
Culture and the Meaning of Trauma
The meaning of the traumatic experience is central to the development of PTSD. Two factors, social support systems and the meaning of the trauma, significantly affect the development and intensity of PTSD. The ameliorative effects of social support and the (cultural) meaning of the trauma for individuals and the community can be compared by reviewing two divergent disaster experiences: the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995 and the volcanic eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s in 1980. The bombing in Oklahoma was an unexpected human-made catastrophe that took lives (including those of children), maimed people, and brought heightened awareness of terrorist activities in the United States. In a survey of survivors of the direct blast who experienced the bombing, 35% developed PTSD (North et al., 1999). The eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s in Washington State in 1978 was an act of nature with some warning. Of those exposed to extreme stress during the eruption, 40% reported major psychological disturbance 3 to 4 years following the disaster (Keane, 1990).
However, the Yakima, Tietnapum, Wanapums, and Klikitat Indians, who live near Mount St. Helen’s and in the path of the wind, reported few incidents of traumatic sequelae in response to the eruption. For these people, stories about the mountain blowing open had been shared for as long as they could remember. The “old ones” had predicted its rising and believed that the ashes would renew the earth (Rÿser, personal communication, August 14, 1995). It may be that the elements of group meaning-making through story and social supports were protective against the development of stress disorders when the mountain did blow.
Conversely, whereas both Alaska Natives and European Americans experienced social disruption resulting from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, Alaska Natives experienced higher levels of PTSD associated with low family support, participation in spill cleanup activities, and a decline in subsistence activities, in contrast to the European American sample (Palinkas et al., 2004). The definition of PTSD in this example must serve as a starting point only for a diagnosis, considering that ethnocultural studies of trauma demonstrate the potential contribution of social conflict and isolation following disasters. For example, among Alaska Natives, the loss of subsistence and involvement in cleanup may have had more cultural meaning related to social integrity than it did for European Americans. The cultural variation of response to both the volcanic eruption and the oil spill emphasizes the primacy of social and cultural context and meaning-making in the development of PTSD and its sequelae.
Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma
The United States is a country of immigrant populations, reflecting wide cultural diversity. Effective assessment and treatment depend upon an understanding of the complex relationship between culture and trauma, including the intergenerational transmission of trauma. This refers to the transmission of victimization, traumatic exposures, and traumatic meaning-making systems from one generation to another. The term also refers to how whole cultures pass this information along. Traumatic experiences have affected every cultural group in the United States today.
Before the 17th-century arrival of religious refugees escaping persecution in England, the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and California. The effect on the lives of indigenous peoples on the continent was often traumatic. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, Chinese, Filipino, and African people arrived under traumatic conditions, often as slaves. The arrival of the Europeans had a varied effect on the more than 500 tribes of indigenous peoples populating every corner of the continent. Popular (stereotyped) notions about the current lives of American Indians illustrate the complex role of trauma and culture and the tendency toward cultural reductionism. Attempts to classify people by their blood quantum or their “color” perpetuate oppressive stereotypes. The tribes of North America all had varied experiences with the Europeans, ranging from productive relationships to situations marked by various degrees and types of trauma and genocide (Mann, 2011).
Currents of the traumatic past remain strong today, especially where government and social policies reinforce them. Among non-Indian populations, American Indians are often an “invisible people” (Rÿser, 2001)—or, if visible, they are usually seen through the lens of stereotyped notions of “drums and feathers,” powwows, casinos, or rates of alcoholism. Stereotypes limit the analysis to the negative social issues confronting Indian country and ignore its creative resiliency. Approximately 50% of the American Indian population resides in urban settings. Charting the specific types and kinds of traumatic exposures and successful coping strategies reservation and off-reservation peoples employ to resist discrimination and genocide counteracts the tendency toward cultural reductionism.
“Whether we are conscious of it or not, we live by stories, which affect how we perceive reality.”
Historical Trauma and Postcolonial Stress Syndrome
Historical trauma and unresolved grief arising from the legacy of colonization have implications for therapeutic interventions and community healing with American Indians (Brave Heart & DeBruyn, 1998; Whitbeck, Adams, Hoyt, & Chen, 2004), Alaska Natives (Korn, 2002), and Mexican Indians (Korn & Rÿser, 2006). Within the therapeutic community, there is a “culture of denial” about the ongoing nature of the colonization of tribal communities (Weingarten, 2004). Colonization of the land, some suggest, has led to colonization of the mind (Martin-Baro, 1994), leading to dissociation, depression, substance abuse, and suicide, all part of a nexus called postcolonial stress disorder.
This disorder is linked conceptually to posttraumatic stress and community trauma (Duran & Duran, 1995; Korn, 2002). Depression, somatization, substance abuse, and trauma are comorbid at high rates among Aboriginal populations (Kirmayer & Valaskakis, 2009). Colonization and its ongoing effects on American Indians and Alaska Natives are diverse and affect the individual family and community differently. Assessment of historical and intergenerational trauma should begin with telling the story and identifying meaning by asking about tribal or community identity, family relationships and experiences, and the roles played by grandmothers, great-grandparents, and earlier generations
Whether we are conscious of it or not, we live by stories, which affect how we perceive reality. How might our understanding of trauma change if we started with a story, not a symptom?
References:
Brave Heart, M. Y. H., & DeBruyn, L. M. (1998). The American Indian holocaust: Healing historical unresolved grief. American Indian and Alaskan Native Mental Health Research: The Journal of the National Center, 8(2), 60–82.
Duran, E., & Duran, B. (1995). Native American postcolonial psychology. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Keane, T. M. (1990). The epidemiology of post-traumatic stress disorder: Some comments and concerns. PTSD Research Quarterly, 1 (3), 1–8.
Kirmayer, L. J., & Valaskakis, G. G. (Eds.). (2009). Healing traditions: The mental health of aboriginal peoples in Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Korn, L. (2002). Community trauma and development. Fourth World Journal, 5(1), 1–9. Retrieved from http://www.cwis.org/fwj/vol5_1.htm.
Mann, C. C. (2011). 1493: Uncovering the new world Christopher Columbus created. New York: Knopf.
Martin-Baro, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
North, C. S., Nixon, S. J., Shariat, S., Mallonee, S., McMillen, J. C., Spitznagel, E. L., & Smith, E. M. (1999). Psychiatric disorders among survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing. Journal of the American Medical Association, 282(8), 755–762.
Palinkas, L. A., Petterson, J. S., Russell, J. C., & Downs, M. A. (2004). Ethnic differences in symptoms of post-traumatic stress after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, 19(1), 102–112.
Rÿser, R. C. (2001). The invisible peoples: States governments, civil societies, and fourth world nations. Social Development Review, 5(2), 1–7.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). Exxon Valdez spill profile. U.S. EPA. Retrieved June 9, 2025, from https://www.epa.gov/emergency-response/exxon-valdez-spill-profile
U.S. Geological Survey. (n.d.). 1980 cataclysmic eruption of Mount St. Helens. USGS. Retrieved June 9, 2025, from https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/mount-st.-helens/science/1980-cataclysmic-eruption
Weingarten, K. (2004). Witnessing the effects of political violence in families: Mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of trauma and clinical interventions. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 30(1), 45–59.
Whitbeck, L. B., Adams, G. W., Hoyt, D. R., & Chen, X. (2004). Conceptualizing and measuring historical trauma among American Indian people. American Journal of Community Psychology, 33(3–4), 119–130.
Leave a Comment