The surveys took place in community clinics and centers including Alaska Native cultural centers, with community counselors on hand and available to participants, Malhi said. "They also may have disturbed sleep, feel distant from other people or experience fear that the traumas will happen again."
"Some of the symptoms that people reported included increasing sadness, depression, anger or anxiety when thinking about different types of historical traumas," LaVanne said. Questions included the frequency of thoughts of historical traumas and losses and the symptoms experienced when reflecting on those events. "Participants completed surveys on cultural identification, historical traumas and general well-being," Malhi said. The second element of the study looked for evidence that Alaska Native cultural identification correlates with well-being. The study looked at whether people's feelings of sadness, anger or anxiety when reflecting on traumatic events coincided with specific changes in DNA methylation, as previous studies in other groups have found. To better understand how such experiences might affect gene expression, the research focused on one type of epigenetic change called DNA methylation. "There is an impact on generations and generations of Native people," she said. Having been deprived of a chance to learn how a family functions, such individuals often lack basic insights into parenting their own children. "It definitely left scars, and I do know that I suffered from trauma," she said.Īmong other harms, such experiences alter a child's social and psychological development, Worl said. She remembers lying in bed, staring at the mountains and wondering why she was there. She was taken to a Presbyterian boarding school, which used a system of mass punishment on children who "misbehaved," requiring the other students to collectively beat them with wooden paddles, Worl said. "At the age of six, I was kidnapped and taken from my grandparents, supposedly to an orphanage," Worl said. Her Tlingit names are Yeidiklasókw and Kaaháni, in the Tlingit, Ch'áak' (Eagle) moiety of the Shangukeidí (Thunderbird) Clan from the Kawdliyaayi Hít (House Lowered From the Sun) in Klukwan. Worl is the president of Sealaska Heritage Institute, a nonprofit organization in southeast Alaska that works to perpetuate Alaska Native cultural traditions. For example, study co-author Rosita Worl experienced the trauma of being separated from her family as a young child. Such experiences often leave lasting psychological scars. "Notorious examples of historical trauma in Native American and Alaska Native peoples include genocide and cultural genocide, forced relocation, and the boarding school era," the authors write. Native communities in Alaska have experienced centuries of disruptive violence, disease and displacement, largely resulting from colonial expansion into the Americas and centuries of mistreatment well beyond the colonial era. Research on epigenetic changes in response to trauma is in its infancy, but studies involving other groups have found trauma-related modifications to genes involved in homeostasis, the immune response, the stress response and other functions, Malhi said.
"Epigenetic alterations can persist throughout the lifespan and are sometimes maintained over multiple generations." "These epigenetic modifications are often studied in response to severe changes in lived environments," LaVanne said. While DNA sequence remains stable throughout the lifespan, small chemical modifications to specific genes can turn up or turn down the expression of those genes, said study lead author Mary LaVanne, who conducted the analysis while a postdoctoral researcher at the U. The Native Nations guided the design and interpretation of the study and retain control of all of the data, in accordance with principles of Indigenous data sovereignty, said Ripan Malhi, a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and corresponding author of the new study. The study is the result of a close collaboration between the scientists and members of two Alaska Native communities. The new findings are detailed in the International Journal of Health Equity. The study also found that individuals who strongly identified with their Alaska Native heritage and participated in cultural activities generally reported better well-being.
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