ARTICLE
When Healing Looks Like Justice: An Interview with Harvard Psychologist Joseph Gone
In American Indian communities, there is a well-developed discourse that runs parallel to the discourse of mental health. Historical trauma is the linchpin of that because it is an alternative, or I might say ‘alter-native’ way of talking about indigenous suffering that, in some cases, rejects DSM diagnostic categories. It has different views about what it means to be a healthy person, which is not necessarily neoliberal individualism, where free agents navigate free markets in pursuit of happiness, success, and productivity. Instead, it deals with one’s location within a kinship network and position relative to the unfolding of a community’s existence.
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Life’s work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will.
