Details

Storyteller: Carla
Tribe: Lower Brule Sioux Tribe
Created: 2018
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Transcript: I grew up on a reservation. Not knowing that one day my life as I know as normal would be studied, analyzed, paralyzing at times. Because the description we are labeled with is historic trauma, therefore the paralyzing of my spirit at times when I have to be reminded of it out loud. Otherwise I just lived the life.

Never knew I would have to defend my determination to keep alive the historic trauma brought about to me through the determination of the government to make my people, my relatives, my ancestors into someone we were not created.

Determination to relocate my family succeeded 3 times.  Historically when all the lands were taken from my people and we were put on reservations.  Relocated again when the lands were taken for the flooding of the rivers to make dams. Then, the 1950’s relocations Act to make our people become someone that doesn’t live on a reservation and lives in big cities.  Make us become non-Indian. 

As a young child, an Indian baby having to be put in a hospital named Sioux San because my mother had TB. And that was what the people in control said was the best for my mother. She could heal faster if the child was with her. A place where they practiced on the TB patients... And exposing me to the disease. My mother lost one of her lungs and then died later. I lost my mother when I was 5 years old. Years later those in control realized it was a mistake to put me in that hospital environment. Too late. Just like the other mistakes made by the government toward my family, my people.

Living on my reservation in a 3-room house, with an outhouse and no running water until I was a freshman in high school.  This was the country I grew up in with horses, cattle, dogs and cats. Prairie dogs and rattle snakes. I didn’t know I was supposed to think I was any different.  

Until I was an adult and began hearing the words historic trauma. I had no idea I was traumatized by the normal way of life. However, it is in my DNA and I feel it every day.  

It is not a trauma that any one in control can fix. It was forced upon us. We suffered the effects of all this control. Only I can attempt to deal with the pain and suffering of my parents and their parents and back as far as my people are.  And it is a trauma that can never be repaired, fixed or hopefully repeated.