Resilience’s resiliency (on Indigenous survival and settler colonialism): Joshua L Reid, ‘On Indigenous Resilience’, The American Historical Review, 129, 4, 2024, pp. 1410-1419 | settler colonial studies blog

Resilience’s resiliency (on Indigenous survival and settler colonialism): Joshua L Reid, ‘On Indigenous Resilience’, The American Historical Review, 129, 4, 2024, pp. 1410-1419

09Dec24

Excerpt: Indigenous historians engage with and understand resilience through both an interdisciplinary lens and specific community attitudes toward the concept. Scholars of developmental psychology, psychiatry, social work, and education have drawn on resilience to analyze how Indigenous peoples have dealt with the trauma of colonialism, especially settler colonialism, while maintaining distinct beliefs, practices, and identities. Moving beyond the “bounce back” understanding of the concept, Native social work researcher Hilary Weaver defines resilience as “an ability to resist, persevere, survive, and grow despite significant challenges” and broadens those expressing resilience to include communities and the natural world. She and others posit that resilience is central to being Indigenous; Stephanie Rotarangi and Darryn Russell, for example, connect it explicitly to indigeneity, arguing that “to be indigenous is to be resilient.” These scholars and practitioners showcase resilience to illustrate that there is more to Indigenous peoples than damage and trauma even as they acknowledge that the catastrophic consequences of colonialism and capitalism on Native nations, communities, and environments. Much of their scholarship highlights how Indigenous identities, beliefs, and practices continue and are expressed, reclaimed, and transformed today. They argue that Indigenous expressions of resilience often connect past, present, and future. For example, some point to ways that ancestors who first encountered colonial expansion planned for the continuity of their peoples; additionally, they urge Native peoples today to carry forward ancestral responsibilities for subsequent generations. Drawing on the idea of intergenerational trauma or Historical Trauma Theory as proposed by Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, others explore how the trauma of ancestors remains relevant for Indigenous peoples today. Countering developmental psychology’s tendency to pathologize the individual through resilience analysis, these scholars shift the focus of trauma onto the structures and systems responsible for causing the damage, i.e., colonialism and capitalism.

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