The Persistence of Trauma Across Generations

Trauma is not a one time instance in the novel. Rather, the trauma experienced in the novel occurs over multiple generations. In some ways most of the generations in the novel experience direct trauma because of their experience being Indigenous people in America. Cora and Jack’s story is the oldest told in detail in the novel. They both attended the Carlisle school and experienced the trauma of cultural erasure as well as physical, emotional, and psychological abuse at the school. While Lillian, Cornelius, Blanche, and Luther attended a different Indian boarding school, they too experienced trauma. Here Blanche loses her life by singing a song in a Native language, and Lillian must watch her sister die in this manner. These are direct traumas inflicted upon key characters and members of this ancestral line at the hands of American colonizers.

This...