Mechuksus,
As I write this I am trying to overcome the taboo's within California Tribal Communities that come along with the culturally invasive factors of asking the ACE questions. Our traditional societies had very strict rules on what we talked about between male and female relationships as well as outside of the community unit.
Unless you work within the wellness realm or you have pursued your own healing many Tribal Communities are unaware of what ACEs are. This is something that my family has pledged to change. My 15 year old daughter was sexually assaulted by a member of our community. She fought three solid years to until there was a conviction. On her journey to finding safety is when we were introduced to the ACEs test.
We had no idea until my daughter found the ACEs test that my cancer, diabetes, anxiety and other health factors that were impacting me at age 31 could all be linked back to my ACEs. We took a long hard look at the traumas my daughters had experienced and realized they would all score 8s. We knew something had to change. My daughter quickly began her prevention awareness work and stood up to a very toxic community action board and explained to them why we need trauma informed organizations and why you should know your ACE score. That for four generations we have been operating in a survival state from our ancestors historical trauma. Meaning that four generations ago our grandma's were stolen as 10 year old children and taken to boarding schools robbed of their culture, family and their language. Our grandmother's communities adopted a sort of don't ask don't tell mentality to survive. They were to afraid of having their families torn apart so they stayed silent about the abuse that was done to them both from outsiders and people within our own communities.
When we look at our ACEs scores and epigenetics we realize that we can no longer live in the mentality of just trying to survive. We have to create a dialogue where it is safe to talk about our child hood trauma.
http://www.spokesman.com/stori...man-in-seattle-surv/
When you look at the recent study of Native Women you begin to see the rate that ACEs effect Indigenous women specifically. 81.7% of the women in the study were raped before the age of 18. Can you imagine that living in a community knowing that you were destined to be raped before the age of 18. We look at other studies or lack there of and see that four out of five Native women have experienced sexual violence https://indianlaw.org/issue/en...against-native-women.
This is why including Tribal communities in ACEs education is so important. We have the tools within our traditions and culture to help us prevent these adverse childhood experiences. A huge part of our resilience is who we are and where we come from and being taught that we can foster changes and undo our epigenetics on a cellular level. But first we must over come the taboo's of asking the questions about our ACEs and creating safe spaces to answer them.
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