Collective Trauma and the Sustainability of Indigenous Identity Through Storytelling

Abstract

Collective indigenous trauma has been caused by the colonialism and forced displacement, cultural oppression, violence by their host nations, and other processes of socialization. These processes occurred in some of the geographical and cultural locations. Besides the psychological impact that these processes had on these communities, they are seen to have endangered the indigenous worldview, language, and method of knowing to extinction. This essay discusses the significance of storytelling, which is the cultural process itself, among the Indigenous. In this case, it is proved that storytelling assists the Indigenous to deal with collective trauma and preserve their identity in terms of collective trauma theory. Collective trauma history theories together with the Indigenous theory. The paper determined that narration is crucial to maintenance of relational worldviews. Moreover, storytelling enables these communities to evade the intergenerational trauma; and indeed, storytelling leads to cultural continuity despite the general tendency to be marginalized. The study in its conclusion gave the finding that we must revisit the popular theory of trauma through the Indigenous process of storytelling. The research also came up with the fact that we should consider the art of storytelling a live knowledge rather than cultural knowledge.