Prentis Hemphill, in a webinar co-hosted with their team from Resilient Strategies, a healing justice project, shared this definition of trauma, and the role that resources play in communities' access to resilience:
"Oppression is actually how society organizes itself to control and distribute trauma.
One of the things we’re arguing is that, what oppression ends up being fundamentally, is the organization and concentration of traumatic experiences, in certain communities, or with certain peoples, and the removal of, or reduction of, the net or supports it takes, or the time, or the resources, to heal from or transform those traumatic experiences. That is what oppression ultimately does.
When we’re talking about the generational trauma or collective trauma that communities experience, we’re talking about the way it has been concentrated in our communities and the resources that have been pulled away or criminalized or interrupted, so that it becomes more and more difficult for communities to actually heal from those traumatic experiences."
The webinar was recorded and distributed as a podcast. Listen to full podcast here.
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