New Paths for Healing: Talk by SSW Alumna Brave Heart Draws Delegation From Maine

When social worker Esther Attean began working with fellow members of Maine’s Wabanaki communities in the late 1990s, she discovered they lacked a framework for talking about the losses Native Americans have sustained over generations in her state.

“The effects of trauma—feelings of grief, stress, anger and anxiety—were all passed down,” said Attean, who co-directs Maine-Wabanaki REACH, a cross-cultural collaborative that is working to develop better child welfare practices with Native American families. “But a lot of our trauma is still unresolved because it hasn’t been acknowledged.”

Attean and her colleagues at REACH (short for Reconciliation, Engagement, Advocacy, Change, Healing) then learned about the work of Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, who earned a Ph.D. from the Smith College School for Social Work in 1995 and who will be speaking at Smith on Monday, July 27.

Brave Heart’s groundbreaking concept of “historical trauma”—which describes how the effects of collective injuries such as genocide and discrimination can linger for generations—offered new avenues for recognizing and healing trauma experienced by members of Maine’s Wabanaki Confederacy.

Attean said Brave Heart’s work provided a new way of looking at persistent problems in Wabanaki communities, including high rates of unemployment and children in foster care.

“It was like we finally got a diagnosis,” Attean said. “Her lens is so liberating for native people because it says there is really nothing wrong with us as individuals. It’s trauma that’s passed down through the community.”

Attean is one of a dozen people from Maine who will travel to Smith to hear Brave Heart speak July 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall. The delegation includes social workers from nonprofit and state agencies representing both Native Americans and non-native “allies.”

Some are also members of a new truth and reconciliation commission that has just issued a report on how Wabanaki families have fared in their dealings with Maine’s child welfare system.

Brave Heart, who is associate professor of psychiatry and director of Native American and disparities research at the University of New Mexico, will deliver the SSW’s Lydia Rapoport Lecture. Her talk on “Historical Trauma and Unresolved Grief: Implications for Clinical Research and Practice with American Indians and Alaska Natives” is free and open to the public.

Marianne Yoshioka, dean of the Smith College School for Social Work, said the school community is “honored to have Brave Heart return to share her groundbreaking work with us.”

In addition to providing insight into working with indigenous populations, Yoshioka said Brave Heart’s ideas “provide a framework for clinical practitioners to understand the impact of historical trauma on communities of color and the inherited grief of clients they serve.”

Carol Heifetz Wishcamper ’65, co-chair of the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC), heard about Brave Heart’s campus lecture through Smith alumnae networks and instantly knew her colleagues would want to attend.

“To this community, Brave Heart is a rock star,” Wishcamper said. “People are really excited about getting to meet her and maybe getting some feedback on the work they are doing.”

Over the past two years, that work has involved coordinating interviews with nearly 160 people—nearly two-thirds of them Wabanaki—who came forward to share with the commission their experiences with the state child welfare system, Wishcamper said.

The commission found that over the last 13 years, Wabanaki children were five times more likely to end up in foster care than non-native children. While it did not review current conditions in Maine’s child welfare system, the commission’s report details a history of racism and abuse that Wabanaki people have experienced in state boarding schools and foster care.

Attean said Brave Heart’s work has been useful, not only in raising awareness about the effects of such trauma, but also in helping Wabanaki communities to heal.

“The model she developed includes education, so that native people know the truth about what happened,” Attean said. “And then there are strategies for using traditional ceremonies for healing.”

REACH—which cites Brave Heart’s work in its mission statement—has developed training tools for child welfare workers and policymakers to deepen the understanding of Wabanaki history, increase the state’s compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act, and foster mutually respectful working relationships with Native American communities.

The organization has also used traditional peace circles to encourage community members to share stories about their experiences with the child welfare system.

Penthea Burns, the other co-director of Maine-Wabanaki REACH, says Brave Heart’s influence has “instilled hope” among Wabanaki families and helped draw non-native allies to efforts to improve child welfare policies. Many of the TRC’s recommendations have grown out of work that REACH has done in Native American communities.

“Before, we were doing policy reform and changing training, and all of those things were good. But there was something beneath the surface,” Burns said. “We had to ask ourselves, ‘what is it we’re not attending to?’”

Brave Heart’s ideas about intergenerational trauma have become “foundational to Wabanaki healing and to our work with allies,” Burns said. “It’s less about blaming and more about understanding that there is a way out of the trauma.”

Dean Yoshioka said she hopes Brave Heart’s lecture on campus draws from a wide segment of people interested in social work and social justice.

“We can all benefit from learning what we can do to support indigenous people and other people of color who are navigating the impact of past injustices,” she added.

Brave Heart, who has taught at the Columbia University School of Social Work and the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work, founded the Takini Network/Institute in South Dakota, a Native American collective devoted to community healing from intergenerational trauma.

She earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from Tufts University, a master’s degree from the Columbia University School of Social Work and a Ph.D. in clinical social work from Smith.

Find out more about Brave Heart’s work and her upcoming Smith visit.

Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, who earned a Ph.D. from the Smith College School for Social Work in 1995, will speak on campus Monday, July 27.