The difficulty we're facing is that we keep silent about the trauma we're inflicting on our people, the intergenerational trauma stuff. Holding forums around trauma, education and community needs are the kinds of discussions that need to be held.
There's another piece of it that is very difficult: When someone divulges, we have a culture wherein we attack the person who has been abused and we protect the abuser. We have all of these very powerful structures in our communities such that we're out to not deal with the trauma. We need the ability to be open, honest and transparent about intergenerational trauma. Hey, if we're going to help aboriginal kids, we have to hold talks about intergenerational trauma. Do we have to do it in a rough or rude way? No. We can come and say, “Okay, our kids are hurting. How can we help? How can the school system or political system come to open up this very serious problem?” It's closed right now. We don't talk about it.
On the news, we see drug and alcohol issues and suicide. That's not the problem; the problem is underneath. It's the trauma we're inflicting. We have to be able to open up dialogues in a gentle way. I'm totally against saying, “We have to talk about sexual and spousal abuse, and community abuse.” That's not the way. We have to come in and talk with the community leaders. There are two types of leaders in our communities. There are the political leaders and the unofficial leaders. How do we get them talking about it? It's “Hey, your community is hurting. How can we help?”
Then, for God's sake, help.