Cultural Competency and Trauma in Criminal Justice

Cultural competency is an important factor in dealings with any populations with racial, ethnic, or religious considerations. “Cultural and linguistic competencies is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals that enables effective work in cross-cultural situations.” (Rousseau, 2018). Though I cannot speak specifically regarding all cultures, I can speak about the unique cultural considerations of the Indigenous people in the United States and Canada.

Indigenous people in the U.S. and Canada have a long history of abuse and traumatic events but what many people do not realize is that this trauma has impacted all generations. Historical trauma is the “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding across generations, including the lifespan, which emanates from massive group trauma.” (delVecchio, 2015). The trauma is passed down from one generation to the next through storytelling, physical and emotional abuse, and addiction. Many people are aware of some of the more prominent instances of injustices to the indigenous people, including colonialism, the Trail of Tears, and Wounded Knee. However, history books often overlook one of the darkest and most impactful periods in Native history – the residential school era.

Residential schools came about as a way to assimilate indigenous communities to a more European lifestyle. One of the more famous schools was the Carlisle Indian School whose founder, Lt. Richard Pratt, came up with the motto “Kill the Indian to Save the Man” (Pember, 2017). Native children were taken away from their families, usually by force, and housed in the residential schools for most of the year. The long hair of the boys, an important symbol in Native culture, was cut short, the children were forbidden to speak their language, abused physically and sexually, forcefully sterilized, and malnourished. Many children died, their deaths often not being reported to their families until long after, and they were buried in unmarked graves. It is estimated that about 6,000 children died in the residential schools in Canada alone (Pember, 2017). The last of these schools did not close until the early 1990s and the effects of colonialism and assimilation are very present in indigenous communities today.

Today’s Native communities are suffering from domestic violence, mental health issues, high suicide rates, addiction, and poverty. Many people have lost their language, culture, and identity. Michelle Obama put the suffering of the indigenous communities into perfect context. She said “Folks in Indian Country didn’t just wake up one day with addiction problems. Poverty and violence didn’t just randomly happen to this community. These issues are the result of a long history of systematic discrimination and abuse. We began separating children from their families and sending them to boarding schools designed to strip them of all traces of their culture, language and history.” (Pember, 2017). In order to better support indigenous people throughout the criminal justice system, it is vitally important to understand where these problems come from and how to use the positive aspects of the culture, such as traditional medicine, sweat lodges, family support, and traditional teachings, to rehabilitate offenders.

Here is a link to a recent story about how my own community (Akwesasne) is rebuilding the foundations of language after the significant losses from the residential school era (please forgive the reporter’s mispronunciation of Akwesasne):

References:
Rousseau, D. (2018). Module 4: Implementing Psychology in the Criminal Justice System. Retrieved from https://onlinecampus.bu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_50742_ 1&content_id=_6167937_1&framesetWrapped=true

delVecchio, P. (2015). The Impact of Historical and Intergenerational Trauma on American Indian and Alaska Native Communities. Retrieved from: https://blog.samhsa.gov/2015/11/25/the-impact-of-historical- and-intergenerational-trauma-on-american-indian-and-alaska-native-communities

Pember,M.A. (2017). When Will U.S. Apologize for Genocide of Indian Boarding Schools? Retrieved from: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-annette-pember/when-will-us-apologize-fo_b_7641656.html

View all posts