Yellow Bird – colonization and stress

A lot of the work that I’ve done in recent years has been really focused on the effects that colonization has had on the mind and the body of Indigenous people. And what happens in particular, under systems of really long-term chronic stress has been really of interest to me. Since I’ve seen a lot of – I have a background in health, and I’ve seen a lot of responses to long term stress that I’ve been able to kind of read a bit more about and study a bit more about in the literature.

So, a lot of the times when we think about colonization, we think about it as an event that’s happened but it’s an ongoing process that continues on in many different ways. And it’s quite complex to think about it, and I’m not even sure where to start because colonization has happened at different periods of time and have different waves of colonization that have affected Indigenous people in particular, all around the world.

And a lot of the effects that have happened we see on the outside where we may see people lose language, lose land, maybe they lose their sense of dignity, they lose a sense of identity, those kinds of things. But a lot of times we really don’t see what’s happening down at the molecular and cellular levels when people have been under this chronic stress that comes from colonization. We’re affected in certain kinds of ways and different populations have different kinds of responses to stress, right. And so, what kinds of things help reduce stress or chronic stress. Well, the first, I think, caveat here is that not one size fits all, one size does not fit all.