Community Trauma

We define development that is imposed from outside the community as traumatogenic, and we define community trauma as “events that overwhelm communities’ capacities to function in stable and generative ways.” Habitat destruction, economic dislocation, food security interruption, social order disruption, physical relocation, educational colonization, religious conversion, natural resource piracy, distortion of decision-making, and externally-imposed priority-making are all together and individually characteristics of and consequences of externally-defined and motivated development leading to community trauma.

—Indigenous Peoples and Diabetes: Community Empowerment and Wellness, Mariana Ferreira and Gretchen Lang, eds.

~ by tbarj on June 26, 2007.