Minnesota-Made Documentary Sheds Light on Historical Trauma Plaguing Native Communities

Editors note: This film was first screened in Minnesota during the Twin Cities International Film Festival on April 16, 2018. It's returning to Minnesota for another screening at Squirrel Haus on October 13. 

It started as a documentary on diabetes.

Bob Trench, a director at Fahrenheit Films, had traveled to Montana to investigate how a rural state population handled chronic diseases like diabetes.

“Montana has many unique health care situations that, because of the lay of the land, are hard to treat,” Trench tells me. “Some people can live long distances from health care providers. Some people don’t have phones, cars, transportation, etc. The original objective was to find out how Montana was managing such a difficult diabetes crisis.”

In particular, Trench wanted to investigate diabetes rates in Native American communities. Trench’s research notes from 2014 read: “Native American Indians experience the highest incidences of the disease compared to any other social group… All families with children suffering from diabetes face severe challenges—within the American Indian community those challenges are magnified.”

It was a fascinating and socially relevant subject. But during research, Trench stumbled across something just as impactful, and completely unknown to him and his crew.

“I spent a day with Linda Melbourne and Cheryl Bighorn-Savior at the IHS Diabetes Clinic in Poplar, Montana,” Trench says. “Cheryl and I talked about the high rates of suicide in Indian Country and some of the causes. From there, it became apparent that I needed to attempt to identify the root cause of the bigger issue.”

Research wrapped up in Montana, and the crew returned home to Minnesota. But Trench couldn’t shake what he’d discussed with Cheryl Bighorn-Savior. He started digging, and the documentary moved in a new direction. It turns out that “root cause” has a name, and it’s a concept that’s been studied in Native American communities for decades: historical trauma.

And so, Dodging Bullets—Stories from Survivors of Historical Trauma was born.

“We have been dodging bullets for 200 years”

Throughout Dodging Bullets, different people are asked the question: what is historical trauma? They answer with varying degrees of success.

In some ways, the name is self-explanatory. "Historical trauma" refers to the idea that cultural trauma from long ago can be passed through generations and have a concrete, psychological—even epigenetic—effect. It makes sense if you simplify the concept to a step-by-step process. A traumatic event in the life of your great-grandparents would likely affect the way they raised your grandparents. Similarly, that would affect the way your grandparents lived, and how they raised your parents.

But the concept of historical trauma isn’t as simple as the passing-down of one tragic event. Researchers of historical trauma look at intergenerational patterns of depression, diabetes, suicide, substance abuse, and more. Then they connect these patterns directly with ancestral traumas.

Some of the first historical trauma studies focused on Holocaust survivors and their descendants, tracing feelings of cultural loss and consequent psychological pain in Jewish communities affected by genocide. In Native communities, the academic study of historical trauma began with Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, a Lakota clinical social worker and psychology researcher who now works at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Yellow Horse Brave Heart used the Holocaust research as a foundation for her examination of historical trauma in Native communities, focusing on genocidal and assimilative harms inflicted upon Native Americans following first contact with European-American governments. She looked at events like the massacre at Wounded Knee, forced relocation to reservations, and Native American boarding schools to analyze how traumas that occurred hundreds of years ago manifested themselves in contemporary generations, particularly in the form of symptoms including depression, substance abuse, feelings of inadequacy, and unresolved guilt.

Dr. Yellow Horse Brave Heart conducted her studies by recording interactions with community members about cultural loss and investigating how subjects felt they were affected by past traumas in their present-day lives. In her conversations with boarding school survivors—young Native Americans who were taken from their families, forced to assimilate to American culture, banned from speaking their languages, and often sexually and physically assaulted—Dr. Yellow Horse Brave Heart uncovered ongoing traumatic effects in survivors and their descendants. Survivors struggled with feelings of unresolved anger, guilt, and impaired bonding and attachment abilities. These feelings often resulted in substance abuse. Children of boarding school survivors regularly suffered similar symptoms, as well as instances of assault that paralleled their parents’ experiences, both at home and at reservation day school. In their conversations with Dr. Yellow Horse Brave Heart, subjects connected their psychological traumas directly with experiences of cultural loss and abuse—or the traumatic experiences of their ancestors.

Dr. Yellow Horse Brave Heart discovered parallel evidence when talking to survivors of relocation and massacres, traumas compounded by the fact that the U.S. Government generally prevented Native communities from practicing traditional mourning. Her studies led her to define historical trauma as the “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding across generations, including the lifespan, which emanates from massive group trauma.” Dennis Banks—co-founder of the American Indian Movement—used a more blunt metaphor when speaking with Trench and company: “We have been dodging bullets for 200 years.”

In many ways, Dr. Yellow Horse Brave Heart’s research was harrowing—it unearthed traumas dating back hundreds of years, exposing the destructive effect of the past on the present. But in another sense, it represented a huge step forward. Researchers like Karina Walters, Tessa Evans-Campbell, and Catherine Burnette took Dr. Yellow Horse Brave Heart’s research to new realms, expanding knowledge of the multi-level effects and ramifications of historical trauma. People were starting to look at the devastating statistics often associated with Native American life, and trying to solve the root problem.

“It’s like discrimination, it just takes on a new face.”

Dr. Melissa Walls, associate professor in the department of family medicine and biobehavioral health at University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth, has studied historical trauma for approximately 18 years. But she knew about it her entire life—she just didn’t have a name for it. Her mother’s side of the family is Anishinaabe; she grew up in International Falls, near land that, until recently, belonged to the Anishinaabe. In 1975, Dr. Walls reports, the government seized Native land near International Falls to establish Voyageurs National Park, and the Anishinaabe suddenly lost their rights to the lake they had always riced in, the sacred places where they had buried their ancestors. If Dr. Walls’ uncles wanted to visit the lake they’d sustained themselves with throughout their lives, they risked a federal citation.

These days, Dr. Walls—whose commentary is interwoven throughout Dodging Bullets—works to build on the groundbreaking work started by people like Dr. Yellow Horse Brave Heart. In our conversation about the film, she describes the current state of historical trauma studies.

“We want to move from theory and qualitative research to the statistical realm of things,” she says.

There’s a thorough body of research on historical trauma, well documented by experts like Dr. Walls and Dr. Yellow Horse Brave Heart. Yet the concept still encounters skepticism in both the public and academia. It generally stems from a prejudice-tinged refusal to believe that the past could still affect certain populations. Even so-called intellectuals, Dr. Walls tells me, have trouble moving past the “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” ethos used by many to gloss over everything from slavery to the Vietnam War. In her own studies, Dr. Walls has had people close to her—even family—tell her to “stop living in the past.”

Dr. Walls believes that some of the skepticism boils down to a simple misunderstanding of the concept. The very name “historical trauma,” Dr. Walls explains in our conversation, is a bit of a misnomer.

“It’s historical only in that it started in the past," she says. "What happened in the past set in cycle processes, norms, behaviors, policies that continue to have an impact today.”

Look no further, Dr. Walls continues, than the fact that Native American reservations still exist. “Reservations and funding [for reservations] exist today because of [history]. You can’t say it’s something only in the past.”

People who relegate atrocities against indigenous people to the past ignore the fact that marginalization and oppression continue today. “It’s like discrimination,” Dr. Walls says. “It just takes on a new face.”

There are the skeptics who misunderstand or intentionally contort the role of history in contemporary life. But there are also people who simply don’t understand what historical trauma means. That’s where Trench and his crew come in. With Dodging Bullets, Trench had a mission: to create a digestible demonstration of historical trauma, from the past to the present.

“It’s not my story to tell.”

Trench knew that only those who had experienced historical trauma could truly convey its impact. He also knew that he had no right to explain historical trauma without involving Native communities.

“I didn’t have the knowledge or the background. It’s not my story to tell,” he tells me.

He reached out to Native American co-directors to help with the movie, and Dodging Bullets became a collaborative film. Co-directors included Sarah Edstrom, Jonathan Thunder, and Kathy Broere; Native songwriter Keith Secola scored the soundtrack.

Kathy Broere—Blackfeet Nation—works as a counselor in Browning, Montana, the only incorporated town in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. When Trench got in touch about filming in Browning, Broere tells me, she immediately felt drawn to the project.

“I live in a community where, in the heart of Blackfeet country, we have a lot of poverty,” Broere says. “We knew there was trauma, we knew there was some kind of connection between what happened in the past and how it affects our people now.”

Broere cheerfully acknowledges that she’s no filmmaker. But as a counselor and community member, she had an authentic relationship to the subjects, and the subject material. By contributing to Dodging Bullets, she hoped to build on the healing already happening in her community, and help curb historical trauma once and for all.

Much of Broere's segment consists of an interview with Chy, a Native teenager who opens the film by displaying bullet holes in her family home. We later find out that the bullet holes came from a confrontation between tribal police and Chy’s older brother, Clay, which ended in his death. Chy’s section is one of the most brutal and powerful in the film, part of a social justice segment that examines historical trauma and the tragically high rate at which Native Americans die during encounters with police.

During her on-screen interview, Chy speaks candidly about the police, telling the camera: “I’ve seen things you guys would’ve never seen…We all don’t like the cops. They killed my brother.”

Trench intercuts her interview with the testimonies of Native American Elders like Rick McArthur, a legal worker for the American Indian Movement.

“Let’s say you’re driving down the street, and you’re going 45 in a 35, and a cop pulls you over,” McArthur says in the film. “Your thoughts are, ‘oh, I’m going to get a ticket, am I going to have to pay a fine?’ But a Native going 45 in a 35, when he gets pulled over, they see a man with a gun, walking to their car, the same person who they grew up knowing took their land, their relatives, their culture. That is something that never leaves them.”

When police arrive to the scene of an emergency on reservation land, McArthur explains on-screen, they simply cannot comprehend all the variables at play—trauma, pain, and fear—and lack the understanding needed to resolve situations peacefully.

“To lose your relatives, your land, and your culture,” he continues, “is a trauma that a white person just hasn’t experienced, and doesn't understand. And this is where the problem comes with the police department.”

Clay died during a confrontation with police that began, according to Chy's Dodging Bullets testimony, with an intoxicated dispute between he and his girlfriend.

“What happened to him shouldn’t have happened like that. They were close enough to tase him, they were close enough to spray him,” Chy says. “Right now, he’d be in prison. He’d be safe.”

Rick McArthur—who sadly passed away after filming—was a gray-haired man who worked for AIM Legal Services. Chy is a teenage girl. And yet, they shared knowledge of traumas suffered throughout Native history at the hands of white men with guns. And they vividly felt the connection between past and present.

Over four years, the Dodging Bullets crew traveled the country, interviewing survivors of historical trauma, filming rallies against the Washington Redskins, consulting with experts like Dr. Walls, Dr. Rachel Yehuda, and Dr. Anton Treuer. Narrative-wise, the film sequences through different elements of historical trauma: mascots, treaty rights, the boarding school era, and more. But in each section, the storytelling formula remains the same: intercutting the voices of Native Americans with academic testimonies, historical information, and scenes of contemporary Native life. Though sometimes the structure of the film feels loose, it works: you can’t help but see the connections between past and present, treaty rights and racial slurs, boarding school abuse and addiction. A composite picture forms, revealing the destructive cycles started by Christopher Columbus. Merely reading about Dodging Bullets doesn’t do the subject justice. The only way to begin digesting the information and emotional impact is by watching the film.

“We want compassion and understanding. We don’t want pity. There’s a difference.”

During production, Trench realized how little he knew about Native American history.

“I learned more from [treaty representative and boarding school survivor] Melvin Lee Houston than I ever did [in school],” he tells me.

That experience is far too common among non-Native people. “At one of my recent screenings, I brought in some very highly educated people,” Trench continues. “And someone actually commented that they didn’t know the boarding school era even existed.”

It’s precisely that ignorance that Dodging Bullets aims to combat. One of the most devastating forms of historical trauma, Dr. Walls explains to me, is the erasure of Native history.

“Only telling one group’s history accurately, primarily Europeans, it’s good for nobody. It’s a veil over all of our eyes.”

In Dodging Bullets, the University of Minnesota’s Dr. Michelle Johnson-Jennings (Choctaw Nation) describes a vivid experience her son had in first grade. In class, his teacher described Columbus as a “good guy.” The next day, he went to school with a list of atrocities Columbus committed against indigenous people—and his teacher told him to put it away. When confronted by Dr. Johnson-Jennings, the teacher claimed the material was “too heavy” for young students.

“Wow,” Dr. Johnson-Jennings says in the film, “it’s too much for them, but at the same time my son has to hear that [Columbus] was a good guy?”

Columbus’ reputation seems to be undergoing a long-overdue change. But the fact remains: Native history generally isn’t taught in the American education system, and when it is, it’s marginalized or glossed over. This has a multi-faceted effect. Native children feel like their history and culture don’t matter; they’re relegated to a secondary tier. Non-Native children think of Native history as an afterthought to European-American history. And an entire culture’s genocide becomes normalized.

By examining Native history from first contact to present-day, Dodging Bullets aims to educate the viewer about the untaught parts of American history. The purpose is more practical than academic.

“In order to shorten the distance between each other, we’ve got to use education,” Broere tells me. “We’re going to begin to build some knowledge, and therefore build some understanding and compassion. With the knowledge, and the understanding, and the compassion, the stereotypes [will] begin to melt away. We want compassion and understanding. We don’t want pity. There’s a difference.”

Broere believes that, through compassionate connection, non-Native and Native people alike will take action to end traumatic cycles.

“I have a lot of hope.”

Dodging Bullets is a heavy emotional experience. “The editing was extremely difficult,” Trench says in our conversation. “When you’re working on some of the stories we’re working on—suicide, shootings—it’s very difficult.”

But one of the most powerful elements of the film is the unshakeable sense of pride in Native communities. Dodging Bullets aims to destroy the notion that Native Americans are content to wallow as victims—a pervasive stereotype, even among people who consider themselves “woke.” The entire last section of Dodging Bullets, titled “Loss and Resilience,” takes aim at the offensive caricature of the downtrodden, willfully-helpless Native American. As part of its focus on Native communities fighting against suicide, the segment follows Dirk Whitebreast (Meskwaki Nation), a runner participating in a marathon for suicide prevention. Around the time that his sister committed suicide, Whitebreast was drinking heavily, overweight, generally unhealthy and unhappy. The day his sister died, he stopped drinking. He also moved back home, and started running. In the film, Whitebreast connects his self-improvement with the traditions he rediscovered when he returned home.

“I was trying to help myself,” he explains on-screen. “You know, it happens. Going back to the things that we’re taught, our culture.”

Whitebreast's story functions as a metaphor for how many Native communities have synthesized the best of the past—traditions, culture—with a determined attitude towards the future to fight traumatic endemics like suicide. It focuses on how survivors are battling cycles of suffering, highlighting the fact that there are healthy Native families across America with robust, positive cultural identities.

In addition to exposing the trauma Native communities live with, Dodging Bullets seeks to demonstrate how hard those communities fight to make things better.

“Nobody wants to live in the past,” Dr. Walls tells me. “We’re not wallowing in self-pity. Again, it’s the social justice angle. Who is doing any better by not admitting this, not giving credit to this history?”

For generations, Native Americans have battled against historical trauma, leading researchers to develop the theory of historical resilience: the notion that if you can pass trauma through the generations, you can also pass down strength. That idea gives people like Dr. Walls plenty of optimism for the future.

“I have a lot of hope,” Dr. Walls continues. “I think that the #NoDAPL movement, that was amazing. To see a lot of young Native people feeling empowered to do something…you can’t help but be hopeful seeing big things like that happening.”

Movements like the #NoDAPL protests fit into a larger attempt by Native communities to restore their heritage. On a similar note, Broere tells me that she hopes Dodging Bullets will highlight how Native culture has protected indigenous communities throughout history.

“Even in the trauma that has happened, it’s our culture that has sustained us,” she says.

The next step in the process, Broere believes, is sharing Native experiences—good and bad—with the rest of the world.

“We have to take our knowledge and try to make our community healthier,” she explains. “Native communities know what we have to deal with on a daily basis, but people outside of the community don’t.”

When they have that information, she believes change will come sooner rather than later.

The bad part of making the film, she continues, “was the realization of what we deal with. The good, and the part I’m hopeful about, is getting [knowledge about historical trauma] out to the rest of the world.”

Four-plus years after he first journeyed to Montana, Bob Trench maintains a realistic attitude about the reach of Dodging Bullets. He accepts that the movie likely won’t garner enormous viewership or financial gain.

“It’s producing something commercial versus producing something that gets a message out that you want to stand behind," he tells me. "This isn’t a commercial project.”

That being said, Trench has screened Dodging Bullets across the country, and the movie showed three times at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival—winning the Minnesota Made documentary feature competition. Three distribution companies have approached the filmmakers; they’re planning on a January release, even as they bring the film through the festival circuit. And whatever uncertainty the future holds in no way dampens the ambitions of the filmmakers. When asked about who she wants to see the film, Broere says: “I want my family to see it because I’m so proud, but I want the world to see it. I do. Because it shows hope.” A few seconds later, she adds: “I want people to know how groovy we are!”

For more information about Dodging Bullets and historical trauma, or to request a screening, please visit dodgingbullets.org