Family, Belonging and Displacement

Family, Belonging and Displacement

Family is a range of social, political, and economic complexities. The traditional structure of Aboriginals was based around kinship systems. In most remote areas, households of aboriginal people there were more complex and flexible in their alignment. The indigenous culture constructed in a collectivist kinship structure, denoting that people thought of themselves in terms of their attachment with other people and their community as a whole. Due to a long history of assimilation and colonization strategies made the Aboriginal people stop depending on communal life family structure, this also triggered the breakdown of most families. Indeed family system break down had an impact on aboriginal families and also effects their identity and self-worth. This essay aims to deliberate on various implications of family break down on indigenous families and also how it harms their identities and self-esteem.

Women and Children Abuse

Break down of family had a series of adverse impacts on aboriginal families. One of the most widespread effects is extreme stress, which affected mostly women and children was triggered mainly by abuse and adverse living conditions. Hopkins (1995) stated that traditional foods were, in most instances, substituted by inexpensive low-quality institutional foodstuffs that had high contents of fats and carbohydrates. Most of the residential school students were bullied by other students, deprivation to education, insufficient food and lack of appropriate clothing, and different severe living environments. All those factors accumulated led to extreme, especially among children and women. The perception of Aboriginal women was direct. And blunt. Abuse and violence in Aboriginal communities have reached life-threatening levels causing extreme stresses, especially among children and women.

A research carried out by NAHO (2005) established that Aboriginal children have high rates of asthma, bronchitis, and allergies. After the break down of family settings, aboriginal families were exposed to different types of violence, such as physical assaults, which made them opt to use drugs such as tobacco. More often and more ominously, it includes the oppression of the least influential members of the community, such as children and women. Rape cases become more frequent and widespread among the aboriginal families; this mainly made led to women living in anxiety of being attacked. Violence against Aboriginal children and women did not only evident in their abuse but also in a way in which Aboriginal victims of violence were handled — children and Women victims of violence suffered from uncaring treatment from those people responsible for assisting them. The women who were victimized were deprived of their family, language, and history. In her adult life, women would have all signs of a victimized person, although there were, in most cases, physically victimized. Women victims of violence and rape self-esteem and extreme stresses for the rest of their lives.

Family Violence

The experience of family violence can only be understood from historical context of invasion by white and colonization and they had a series of negative impacts on the locals such as: deterioration of aboriginal law, breakdown of community kinship systems and cultural dispossession, systemic vilification and discrimination, economic and social marginalization, ingrained poverty, problematical substance usage, they also inherited grief and trauma, settlement by whites also led to aboriginal people losing their traditional status and roles. Family violence caused both psychological and physical harm to aboriginal families, women, and children were the ones who were mostly affected by family violence. This violence is known to be passed from one generation to another. Some of the children from aboriginal families who have undergone abuse tend to be violent themselves and become violent adults due to acquired traits and a feeling that their world needs controlling.

As children returned from schools back to their communities, most of them brought with them what they had in school, unhealthy and abusive traits, and also bullying. This had an impact on how some residential school survivors raised you their children and grandchildren. Family violence affects both mental and physical health, and it also triggers social and community problems, such as homelessness. The following are some of the physical effects of family violence to aboriginal people: physical harms, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy difficulties, and other violence-related violence depressions. Family violence effects on the mental health of aboriginal families are also significant, such as depression, nervousness disorders, post-traumatic anxiety syndrome, substance abuse, and even in some cases, led to suicides.

Family violence weakened community systems. Most of the victims of family violence did not have a chance to attend a school or secure a job; most of the aboriginal families affected by family violence turned into a crime.  As Aboriginal families often lived in closely linked community systems, family violence would have an impact on the entire community. In most cases, family violence triggered community depression, which was as a result of a shared sense of disgrace, misery, hopelessness, and demoralization. Cultural factors played a crucial role in the worsening of family violence among aboriginal communities.

European settlement broke down many Aboriginal families, and the impacts are still being felt. Stress and frustration were known to lead to violence in most of the aboriginal communities, but Aboriginal families are challenged by specific stressors, such as loss of traditional culture and land, some of the aboriginal families’ cultural practices reduced chances of interpersonal violence. Breakdown of family systems and Aboriginal law led to a lack of respect between and within families, and it was passed from one generation to another, which eventually led to the loss of identity and racism. A range of other factors that contributed to family violence, increased rates of imprisonment, financial difficulties, job loss, poor health, denial to access education, drug abuse, inadequate or poor housing, and social discrimination.

The trauma of Aboriginal Families after Break down of Family Systems

Family breakdown resulted in the diminishing of the level of trust and also affected their participation in a variety of activities, such as failure to take personal risks. The Aboriginal families no longer had confidence in self that hindered their development of trust with other members of the community. It is also evident that this phenomenon affected the functioning of most First Nations people since they had the feeling of depressed, hopeless, and apathetic. One woman reflected on a deep sense of hopelessness experienced by most of the people from the community:

Loss of family interactions and clan made it hard for most First Nations to have hope that they would have a better future. Pervasive depression, which is a deep feeling of hopelessness, triggered a disinterest of Aboriginal people on their future, in their community and the family. Thibodeau (2003) stated that traumatization after families break down resulted in the loss of trust; some First Nations people have undergone a limited capability to be open, contributing, and sharing to community, family, self, and clan. In his research, Mollering (2001) propose the literature supports the notion that when people are distressed by the loss of interaction with their family members, they would rarely participate in community and family activities, and appear inactive and inaccessible for meaningful social interaction.

The effect of family break down on Aboriginal women

The family breakdown was mostly prevalent on Aboriginal women, European cultural and economic extension led to the loss of identity and self-worth. Their worth as equivalent partners in tribal communities was destabilized completely. Although women played a significant role in the first centuries of interaction with European settlers and their descendants, they were never acknowledged. Aboriginal women’s role in the community remained comparatively stable for some time after the break down of families, but it later changed entirely with the initiation of the residential school system. Violence against Aboriginal women enhanced the establishment of after Confederation of residential schools for Aboriginal children.

Aboriginal women usually played a principal responsibility in the consensual decision-making process of their families and communities. After the family system breaks down, Aboriginal women were denied any vote in the new order initiated by the Indian Affairs government. Women were prohibited from any formal participation in the political processes. The separation of Aboriginal women, both from their traditional responsibility and from broader society, continue to diminish their worth in the communities. The impacts of the past discrimination caused by poor socio-economic state pertinent to most Aboriginal women. Still, it is also an attribute of belittling the perception of Aboriginal that had developed before the family system break downs. The new systems had implemented the stereotypical and destructive perception of Aboriginal women.

Impact of Families Breakdown on Aboriginal Children

Children were taken away from their families at a tender age; some would return after a few years while others would never return. Most of the aboriginal families’ children were unable to speak Aboriginal languages, and the motivation to learn those languages were undermined. Aboriginal children were trained to degrade everything. The growth of childcare skills, usually a substantial aspect of educating their children within Aboriginal families, was deprived of t because they were taken away from communities and families. Most of the institutions did not teach parenting skills. Before the family’s breakdown, Aboriginal children used to learn parenting skills from their parents in their daily direction. That learning system was deprived of too many generations of Aboriginal families. Sexual abuse and physical that took place in those residential schools; mental abuse was the most predominant and the most severe.

According to AHF (2003) to Residential schools elicited the loss of family and community ties, alongside termination of language and culture. However, for Inuit families, there was a substantial additional cost in their forfeit of kinship for traditional country food, for instance, raw meat. Residential schools did not only fail to support the development of conventional parental responsibilities among the aboriginal students, but they also educated the students that they were pagan and most turned away from their religious beliefs. These messages were delivered to Aboriginal students from time to time in a brutal manner. The adverse impact of residential schools is prevalent in Aboriginal families, those children who were denied parenting skills, they strive with families’ roles and efforts to recapture cultural practices and beliefs which they were derived from. The residential school also taught children self-hate.

How Family Breakdown Harms Identity and Self-worth

According to Ing (1990) There is an agreement on the effect of residential school education, the present generation of those survived the residential school system were victims of traumatic loses due to parenting skills, language, and self-esteem, that those loses are both cultural and physiological; and that, therefore, those traumatic involvements will be transmitted from one generation to another. The separation of learning children, both geographically and culturally, lessened the opportunity for Aboriginal children to acquire basic rules such as the language, respect for their elders, and their culture. In the process, the Aboriginal children’s self-esteem was damaged, and communication between generations deteriorated since they lost their language. Beliefs, customs, and values were no longer taught to future generations.

Herejsi, Heavy, and Pablo (1992) established that residential schools deliberately ruined cultural identity, unfortunately, and it seems their strategies were successful. Most of the Aboriginal children who attended residential schools lost their pride in religious beliefs, tribal language, social norms, and customs. Separation of children from their families and their communities had a drastic effect on nearly all Aboriginal families. The cohesion, structural, and quality of family were also affected. Parenting skills lessened as subsequent generations became more and more established and underwent little nurturing.

Self-concept problems and low self-esteem also came up among the children. They were taught that their own culture was substandard and uncivilized (Martens, Daily & Hodgens, 1988). The following generations of tearing apart Aboriginal families have severely damaged the role of extended families and kinship systems, triggering these kinship systems to break down, or in most instances, they were utterly destroyed. Aboriginal children learned in isolation from the dominant society, they were also trained apart from their indigenous culture, in most of residential school settings, which were separated geographically and culturally, the role of residential school was to facilitate: that responsibility of a systematic, formal program of the community language, culture, religion and values.