When Dr. Donna Schindler was a senior at the University of Texas, School of Medicine in 1979, she did an externship at the Laguna Pueblo near Albuquerque, New Mexico. That’s where she said she fell in love with working with Native people. After doing her psychiatry residency in the Bay Area and then working for ten years, she traveled to New Zealand where she joined a Maori mental health team.

In 1997 she moved to Arizona and worked as a psychiatrist on the Navajo Nation. In 2000, she relocated to Auburn, Ca. She has worked with a Native American clinic for the last 14 years and has done telepsychiatry for the Navajo Nation since 2011. She said that until the last ten to fifteen years, many native peoples were not aware of historical trauma and how to deal with it. And currently almost no one in the wider community is familiar with the term.

The concept of historic trauma was initially developed in the 1980s by First Nations and Aboriginal peoples in Canada to explain the seeming unending cycle of trauma and despair in their communities. Essentially, the devastating trauma of genocide, loss of culture, and forcible removal from family and communities are all unresolved and become a sort of psychological baggage continuously being acted out and recreated in contemporary indigenous.

Mark Day, a former Franciscan friar, reached her by phone recently at her home in Auburn. He asked her about her work with historical trauma and how it relates to the current polemic about the canonization of Fray Junipero Serra.

: Lately you have joined other activists in opposing the canonization of Fray Junipero Serra. How does this relate to your work as a psychiatrist?

Schindler: Historical trauma is an enormous problem within California tribes, and in other tribes in the United States and in indigenous populations around the world that have been colonized. In my work I try to help people understand how the traumas of the past still affect them, causing present day problems. After getting to the root of the problem, we begin the healing process. This involves looking at the history of your tribe and sharing stories of the past and also stories of what is happening today.

Day: Can you give me some examples of your work with historical trauma?

Schindler: Last year I dealt with the case of Jamie, a Navajo teenager who was a senior at Monument Valley High School in Arizona. Jamie was brutally murdered by a man for whose family she had babysat. Meanwhile, in an adjoining community of Chinle, five teen girls and five other young adults under the age of 30 committed suicide in the last two years. After Jamie’s death, her mother Lisa and I began talking and we decided to begin “The Sacred Dream Project,” dedicated to heal the soul wound and bring the community back to harmony. The Navajo word hozhonahaslii encompasses our vision and it means “everything will return to harmony.” It was heartening to see that healing was happening at the first meeting of the Sacred Dream Project. We anticipate that the project will continue for many years.

Day: Can you elaborate on the effects of historical trauma?

Schindler: Among Native Americans there are epidemic rates of suicide, domestic violence, substance abuse, depression and illnesses such as diabetes, which are the results of historical trauma. The community I know best on the Navajo Nation, experienced six homicides this year. Many of the homicides are related to use of alcohol and drugs, which are often a form of self-medication. Domestic violence can be seen as lateral oppression, which means that when a population has been oppressed, oftentimes they end up treating others in the same way. That’s why it’s so devastating that Pope Francis is pushing the Serra canonization.

For the most part, California Indians have never healed from the treatment their ancestors endured in the missions, and making Serra a saint is going to make it even harder for healing to occur. That is because in order for healing to occur, the truth must be told. If Serra is a saint, the truth about what really happened in the missions will be buried. A hundred years from now, people will think that since Serra is a saint, he must have done the right thing with the Indians.

On the other hand, surprisingly, there is a lot of healing going on right now because of the responses to the canonization: Native people are gathering to tell their stories and pray at the missions. Many people have dedicated hundreds of hours writing about what happened in the missions, shepherding the moveon.org petition that asks to abandon the canonization of Serra, examining documents such as the Papal Bulls, and connecting with others who want the truth to be told. The “soul wound,” as the natives call it, is beginning to heal because of these activities.

Day: What has to be done to bring about the healing?

Schindler: To heal the historical trauma or soul wound you have to look inside yourself and embrace your pain and suffering, instead of self-medicating with alcohol and drugs. According to Anam Thubten, a Buddhist monk, we often find a ‘dark cemetery’ inside, filled with things like shame, guilt, fear, and anger. I see native people looking at the past, seeing how it affected them–which is part of embracing their pain and suffering. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, is denying its dark side. They are not accepting the reality of what they have done. If they acknowledged it, apologized to the native people and tried to work with them to make reparations, it would make the healing much easier, both for the descendants of those persecuted in the missions, and the Catholic Church as well.

Day: You met recently in Sacramento with a tribal leader, two California bishops, and a representative of the Franciscan order to discuss the Serra canonization. Can you tell us what happened at that meeting?

Schindler: Valentin Lopez, chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and I met with Bishop William Clark of Los Angeles and Father Ken Laverone, who is the Franciscan spokesman for the Serra canonization, and later with Bishop Francis Quinn.

At first I thought Clark and Laverone wanted to help us, to listen to our point of view. We brought up the subject of Elias Castillo’s new book, Cross of Thorns, which details the atrocities committed against the Native Californians at the missions. Clark and Laverone dismissed it, since Castillo, they said, was a journalist, not an historian. Instead they supported another book “Junipero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary” by Rosemary Beebe and Robert Senkewics, partially funded by the Franciscan Academy of American history. I asked to see this book and tried to look up the famous quote by Fray Mariano Payeras, the last padre presidente of the missions. Payeras wrote to his superiors, “All we have done to the Indians is consecrate them, baptize them, and bury them.” That quote was eliminated from this book.

We also brought up Rupert Costo’s book, ‘The Missions of California: a Legacy of Genocide’. Costo wrote that in the 1980’s some priests in Southern California threatened to sanction their parishioners if they shared their ancestors’ stories of the missions with Costo. Fr. Laverone argued that the priests were acting on their own, not doing what the Vatican had told them to do. I read other passages from Costo’s book about historical memories of Native Californians. Fr. Laverone said that you can’t really pay attention to such stories that are passed down using the oral tradition. From that point everything went downhill. We believe there can be no healing, no reconciliation with that kind of an attitude.

Mark R. Day is a former Franciscan friar, a journalist, and Emmy award winning filmmaker. He lives in Vista, CA. mday700@yahoo.com

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