Browsing by Subject "healing"

Abstract Faculty: Faculty of Arts Degree programme: MA Programme in English Studies Study track: General Line Author: Salla-Mari Ackrén Title: Ceremony: Representing Native American Cultures through Trauma and Healing Level: Master’s Thesis Month and year: May 2022 Number of pages: 48 Keywords: Native American literature, Native American culture, trauma, healing, colonialism, war traumas, Leslie Marmon Silko Supervisor or supervisors: Merja Polvinen Where deposited: Helsinki University Library Additional information: - Abstract: This thesis reviews a Native American novel, Ceremony, published by Leslie Marmon Silko in 1977. In her narration, Silko mixes traditional Laguna poems with the experiences of the contemporary protagonist, Tayo, relayed in prose. With this reading, I want to raise awareness of Ceremony and its real-life themes for Native Americans, such as cultural crisis, post-colonial traumas, and mental health problems, along with the importance of nature and animals in Native American cultures. As a group of minorities, Native American literature has not always received the respect and understanding it deserves, which is why I want to raise awareness about Native American culture and the traditions influencing it. In this thesis I use a close reading method to analyze the protagonist Tayo, who has an identity crisis between Anglo American and Laguna cultures. Tayo also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and an alcohol problem due to his experiences in the Pacific theatre in World War II. I analyze his cultural identity development with the help of the narratological theories of James Phelan (1989), the effects of colonialism analysed by Patrick Hogan (2000) and discuss his war traumas with the help of theories by Cathy Caruth (1996) and Suzanne LaLonde (2018). At the beginning of the novel, Tayo blames himself for surviving a war that killed his cousin and for the droughts in his pueblo. He is taken to a Native American ceremony to heal from his depression. However, the first, traditional ceremony does not help him. Instead, the second medicine man, Betonie, performs a ceremony that combines traditional rituals to modern world problems (the war and colonialism), which gradually heals Tayo. During his journey to healing, he has many confrontations, for instance with his alcoholic war veteran friends. However, Tayo benefits from mythical guides along his journey, such as Betonie, a woman called Ts’eh, and Tayo’s lost cattle. At the end of the novel, when Tayo heals and finds his place in Laguna society, also the rains come back, emphasizing the succeeded ceremony, and healing in both the individual and the Native American culture as a whole.

Previous research has shown that colonization had profound impacts on precolonial Indigenous communities in North America. From the first contact, the explorers’ perception was colored by Eurocentric ideas rooted in European social systems, religion, cultures, and values, which called into question the moral worth and very humanity of Indigenous peoples. In Canada, colonialism introduced Indigenous peoples with a new social order, including new political, social, cultural, and economic structures, as well as a new stigmatized Indigenous identity, which became foundational for subsequent laws, policies, and institutional practices that aimed to erase those very elements deemed problematic. In Canada, Indigenous people have since colonization persistently suffered from poorer health compared to settler and more recent immigrant populations. Research points to both proximal and distal determinants behind the disparities documented in Indigenous health, and suggests that along with contemporary socioeconomic conditions, the distal factors of colonialism, virgin soil epidemics, and policies of subjugation and assimilation have been traumatic and have contributed negatively to the contemporary Indigenous population’s health. This research thesis is located in the field of medical anthropology and examines health, illness, and healing as culturally shaped, personal, embodied, and shared experiences, meanings, and illness realities. The theory used this thesis rests on an embodied meaning-centered approach of illness, which suggests that elements from the psychobiological, sociocultural, symbolic, political, and historical experiential realms blend to form a network of meanings for a sufferer, an embodied experience of an illness world that is shared as part of a community. Situated in the context of colonial history and present health disparities, the research questions of this thesis center on discovering major themes of embodied experiences and meanings of health, illness, and healing in an urban Indigenous community. Altogether eight weeks of daily ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in an Indigenous urban community in Vancouver, Canada, in the spring of 2017. The data for this thesis consisted of fieldnotes, ten individual interviews and one group interview, taped public speeches, photographs, and videos. A thematic analysis identified six significant categories of embodied meanings and experiences of health, illness, and healing in community narratives: colonization and colonialisms, colonization traumas, structural violence, survivance and resilience, reconciliation, and healing with culture. This thesis establishes that colonization and various colonialisms with policies of subjugation and assimilation are seen by community members as profoundly traumatic events with negative impacts on health that persist intergenerationally to this day. Collective memories of colonization and colonialisms inform what it once meant to be healthy, how communities became sick, and how they can become healthy again. Due to contemporary experiences of structural violence and racism, Indigenous community members continue to experience Canada as an enduring colonial space. Healing for community members is achieved by decolonizing minds from the once stigmatized identities introduced by colonization and by reindigenizing their world through reintroducing the original cultures and cultural identities back into their daily practices and healing their perceptions of the self.

Despite the long history of skin grafting, there is no standardized treatment for split-thickness skin graft donor sites. These sites cause a notable amount of pain and discomfort to the patients and open wounds also introduce a risk for infection. There is an extensive need for treatment options promoting the fastest and least painful healing possible while also being infection-free. The treatment of split-thickness skin graft donor sites is constantly studied and there is plenty of scientific literature available about this topic. In the theory section of this Master’s thesis, the structure of skin, the process of wound healing, skin grafting surgery and wound care products for split-thickness skin graft donor sites are briefly introduced. Additionally, the method of systematic review is described. In the empirical section, a systematic review is performed to compare animal- and non-animal-based wound care products in the treatment of split skin graft donor sites. The methodological quality of the included studies is reviewed. In the literature search, 3552 references were found. In this systematic review a total of 23 articles were included comprising of 21 comparative clinical studies and two previous literature reviews. Of the original studies, 20 reviewed healing, 14 infection and 17 pain of the split-thickness skin graft donor sites. Based on the results of the systematic review, animal-based wound care products might promote healing and reduce pain experienced by patients in the treatment of split-thickness skin graft donor sites when compared with non-animal-based wound care products. The results concerning infection were inconsistent. Generally, the reporting of the clinical original studies was not comprehensive enough for proper evaluation of methodological quality. Some defects, mostly in the blinding of the patients, study personnel and the assessors of outcomes, were also found. Moreover, the studies were heterogeneous in their definitions and measuring of the reported outcomes. Therefore, there is substantial uncertainty in the results of this systematic review. The systematic and transparent way of conducting the literature search, the review of the methodological quality and the reporting of the outcomes can be considered as a strength of this thesis. The main weakness is, that only one person performed the critical steps of this study, which might increase the risk of bias and reduce the repeatability of the study.

This thesis looks at the post-war reintegration of and war trauma in the former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel force abductees in the Acholi subregion of northern Uganda. The work’s focus is on how the former LRA abductees make meaning of their subjective experience of trauma according to the Acholi world view and how these experiences guide their search for healing. These questions are examined in the context of three healing practices from which the formerly abducted research participants have sought help for their war-related psychological symptoms: public healthcare and non-governmental psychosocial trauma counselling, local ajwaka spirit mediums, and Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian churches. The research for this thesis is based on three-month-long ethnographic fieldwork consisting of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, group discussions, and other informal interactions in the Acholi districts of Gulu and Nwoya between October and December 2017. The core research participants are 20 formerly abducted LRA combatants (ten males and ten females aged between 24–55 years) who have returned back to civilian life before the northern Uganda conflict ended in 2006. Furthermore, medical professionals, trauma counsellors, ajwaka spirit mediums, Charismatic Christian pastor, and relatives of the core research participants were interviewed for this study. This thesis is built around medical anthropological theories of trauma and anthropological theories of subjectivity, where the former LRA abductees’ symptoms are approached through a three-dimensional theoretical framework of inner subjectivity, structural subjugation, and intersubjective relations. This thesis proposes that the war-related symptoms find their meaning through inner and bodily experiences, personal convictions, and subjective world views of their sufferers, which steer the former LRA abductees towards their preferred healing practices. However, these experiences are shaped by external constraints related to economic and sociopolitical subjugation under state rule, hierarchical social structure as well as intimate intersubjective power relations and cultural norms that can either enable or challenge the former abductees’ access to healing. The findings of this thesis suggest that even though the three healing practices approach war-related symptoms from ontologically different angles, they all offer meaningful tools to repair broken social relationships and retether the former abductees back to their social worlds in ways that can reduce trauma symptoms and foster healing. However, for various reasons the administered treatments sometimes fail, which forces symptom-sufferers to move beyond their preferred healing practices to find relief from their war-related symptoms. This thesis argues that the search for healing is full of uncertainty about the cosmological origin of symptoms, social tensions, and opaque motives of helpers. Thus, the healing process is dependent on intersubjective entanglements with kin, treatment providers, illness agents, and healing powers alike, which suggests that different forms of relationality lie at the centre of healing from war trauma. In conclusion, this thesis proposes that the gap between the former LRA abductees and the wider Acholi community has narrowed over the years since the conflict ended, but for some research participants the ongoing experiencing of war-related psychological symptoms still prevent them from fully participating in the Acholi society, which continues to hinder their reintegration. Until recently, the study of trauma in northern Uganda has revolved around the study of local spirits and Acholi rituals. The present study contributes to the broadening of the scope of the study of trauma among the Acholi towards other healing practices and provides a critical and multifaceted review of how the formerly abducted Lord’s Resistance Army combatants conceptualise their experience of war-related psychological symptoms from their socio-cultural perspective in post-war northern Uganda.