Trauma Across Generations
Trauma is interwoven and perpetuated across generations. It transcends individual experience and permeates the psychosocial tapestry of successive lineages. The impacts of centuries of colonization have forged deep marks on Indigenous peoples of the United States, affecting the collective psychological and social well-being of the communities. Thus, the continuation of systemic oppression demands a collective healing approach, as the impacts of trauma are not isolated; an equally comprehensive and coordinated approach is needed. Studies have found that effective treatment begins with a deeper examination of the impacts of historical trauma and the process of transformation toward resilience (Cacace, 2025).
Understanding Intergenerational Trauma
The United States is a country of immigrant populations, but it is also a land of many sovereign Indigenous Nations, reflecting wide cultural diversities. 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 the 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.
“The impacts of centuries of colonization have forged deep marks on Indigenous peoples of the United States, affecting the collective psychological and social well-being of the communities.”
Historical Trauma and Postcolonial Stress Syndrome
Historical trauma and unresolved grief arising from the legacy of colonization have implications for therapeutic interventions and community healings 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).
Epigenetics: The Biology of Trauma
Studies suggest these patterns of postcolonial stress and community trauma may extend beyond the social and psychological manifestations and also appear implanted in biological processes. Epigenetic alterations (referring to shifts in gene activity without altering the DNA sequence itself), such as DNA methylation and histone modification, demonstrate how trauma and environmental triggers can be transmitted across generations without altering the DNA (Deloia & Barbiero, 2018). For Indigenous communities, this can explain the effects of historical trauma persisting even among those who did not directly experience it but inherited vulnerable markers that have been reactivated by environmental triggers.
Rogers-LaVanne et al. (2023) reveal the association between historical trauma and DNA methylation in Alaska Native peoples. Using survey data on historical loss and general well-being, along with DNA methylation profiling of blood samples from 117 Alaska Native participants, the researchers identified associations between historical loss-associated symptoms and differential methylation at specific CpG sites. The study also reports a positive relationship between cultural identification and general well-being, supporting cultural connection as a protective quality.
Coping Skills, Resiliency, and Posttraumatic Growth
The ongoing effects of colonization on American Indians and Alaska Natives are diverse and affect the individual family and community differently. Assessment of historical trauma and intergenerational trauma should begin with telling the story and identifying meaning.
Survival requires a range of personal skills, talents, and sheer bravery. Therapy includes telling the story as well as bolstering the innate resiliency of the survivors and helping them identify ways to acknowledge strengths as well as to develop new skills. This includes focusing on what is working and productive and a source of joy and pleasure, what has been and what she imagines it could be.
Who is resilient? Much of the literature points to protective factors, including a good relationship with a dependable, loving adult, whether a family member or teacher and a strong internal locus of control (Grossman & Moore, 1994). The strengthening of an internal locus of control, which includes both personal control and situation-specific skills, is one of four stress management strategies elaborated by Raymond B. Flannery Jr., a clinical psychologist known for his work on stress, trauma, and resilience (1987, p. 222).
The other strategies are:
• Task involvement, including general competence; this signifies becoming absorbed in the task and being guided by what the task demands.
• Lifestyle choices.
• Social supports.
A systematic review conducted by Cacace et al. (2025) emphasizes that intergenerational trauma is a relational, systemic, and embodied experience transmitted through familial communication, parenting, and shared coping mechanisms. Resilience and vulnerability are byproducts of inheritance and require a multigenerational and narrative-based approach for healing, going beyond individual-level models of trauma and incorporating the cultural, historical, and systemic influences that shape how trauma passes from one generation to the next.
Resilience in Action
Resiliency refers to meaning-making capacities: to make something good come out of a bad experience. Meaning-making forms the basis for exploring spirituality and the role of the self in relation to others and the cosmos.
Resiliency is defined as the capacity to continue to function in the world despite a history of abuse, to demonstrate adaptive characteristics, to convert defensive strategies into unusual strengths, to transform relationships from abusive to rewarding, and to make meaning out of the experiences in a way that benefits or has meaning for other people.
To be resilient means to meet the developmental challenges appropriate to the stages of life. These include intimacy, work, self-care, and meaning making (Grossman & Moore, 1994). Evaluating areas of resiliency is essential to assessment. Because resiliency, like self-esteem, is a fluid force, increasing and decreasing with the vagaries (and traumas) of life, it has to be evaluated both in the present and as part of an overall history.
Identifying the strengths and resilience that the individual has and supporting those throughout the process is key throughout treatment. Research has traditionally focused on factors that lead to the development of PTSD. Less understood are the factors that are either protective against the development of PTSD or contribute to the triumph over tremendous odds to survive and flourish.
However, recent studies by Rogers-LaVanne et al. (2023) reveal that cultural connection is a protective factor that significantly contributes to enhanced well-being. Thus, these findings inspire methodologies designed to support cultural protective qualities as compelling approaches for fostering resilience. These strategies can include ways to support strong cultural identity through language revitalization, Indigenous food sovereignty, and ceremonial practices, including connecting to the land, the use of traditional knowledge, and medicine. Further support has been identified. Masotti et al. (2023) found that Native American and Indigenous cultural engagements were associated with better mental and physical health and overall well-being. These findings reinforce the importance of creating interventions that target increased cultural participation and support as a measurable outcome.
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.
Cacace, A., & Summers, S. J. (2025). Intergenerational trauma in phenomenological research—A systematic review. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 30(8), 1134–1169. https://doi.org/10.1080/15325024.2025.2490917
Deloia, J., & Barbiero, V. (2018). Essentials of Public Health Biology. United States: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Duran, E., & Duran, B. (1995). Native American postcolonial psychology. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Flannery, R. B. (1987). From victim to survivor: A stress management approach in the treatment of learned helplessness. In B. A. van der Kolk (Ed.), Psychological trauma (pp. 217–229). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
Grossman, F. K., & Moore, R. P. (1994). Against the odds: Resiliency in adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. In C. E. Franz & A. J. Stewart (Eds.), Women creating lives: Identities, resilience, and resistance (pp. 71–82). Boulder: Westview.
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
Korn, L., & Rÿser, R. (2006). Burying the umbilicus: Nutrition trauma, diabetes and traditional medicine in rural West Mexico. In G. C. Lang (Ed.), Indigenous peoples and diabetes: Community empowerment and wellness (pp. 231–277). Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
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.
Masotti, P., Dennem, J., Bañuelos, K., Seneca, C., Valerio-Leonce, G., Inong, C. T., & King, J. (2023). The Culture is Prevention Project: Measuring cultural connectedness and providing evidence that culture is a social determinant of health for Native Americans. BMC Public Health, 23(1), 741. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-15587-x
Rogers-LaVanne, M. P., Bader, A. C., de Flamingh, A., Saboowala, S., Smythe, C., Atchison, B., Moulton, N., Wilson, A., Wildman, D. E., Boraas, A., Uddin, M., Worl, R., & Malhi, R. S. (2023, September 8). Association between gene methylation and experiences of historical trauma in Alaska Native peoples. International Journal for Equity in Health, 22(1), 182. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-023-01967-7
Rÿser, R. C. (2001). The invisible peoples: States governments, civil societies, and fourth world nations. Social Development Review, 5(2), 1–7.
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.
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