Earthkeepers: A Circlewood Podcast on Creation Care and Spirituality · Forrest Inslee

Intergenerational Trauma: Native American Truth-Telling, with Robbie Paul | Ep. 140

·36 min·2 clips

A boarding school documentary made Robbie physically sick and sent her running to the river to throw up.

1. Earthkeepers: A Circlewood Podcast on Creation Care and Spirituality frames this episode around intergenerational trauma, Native history, and healing. 2. Forrest Inslee hosts with Lenore Three Stars, and guest Dr. Roberta Paul, called Robbie, brings Nez Perce scholarship and her book Listening to the Birds, A Nez Perce Woman's Journey of Self-Discovery and Healing. 3. The episode asks what Native truth-telling is for during Native American Heritage Month and the Thanksgiving season. 4. Lenore Three Stars says she is Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, with a mother from Cheyenne River Reservation. 5. Robbie Paul says she is Nez Perce, gives her Nez Perce name Tali Kitsuma, and says she was born and raised in Crate Mott, Idaho. 6. Robbie says her mother was non-Native and of Irish, German, and English descent. 7. Robbie says her book began with a clear message from her ancestors: “It’s time to tell our story,” and “it’s also time to heal.” 8. She says her divorce pushed her to examine depression and family history, especially the times her own emotions lined up with older family events. 9. She says intergenerational trauma is a real pattern across generations, and she points to Maria Braveheart Yellow Horse and the Holocaust as part of the term’s origin. 10. She says Native peoples have lived with about 500 years of genocide, which shaped the wounds she was trying to understand. 11. Robbie says the documentary In the White Man’s Image made her physically sick when she learned how boarding school children were stripped, dressed, and renamed. 12. She says she ran to the river and threw up, then later saw a photo of her grandfather at boarding school and began to understand what he had endured. 13. Robbie says her grandfather’s dream message was that she might get his outward appearance but not all of his “Indianess.” 14. She says a medicine bag from his mother and his later return with Nez Perce language showed survival under boarding school pressure. 15. Robbie says the Nez Perce War had been mostly unspoken in her family, and she connects her grief to the August 9 battle in which her grandfather lost five siblings. 16. She says commemoration ceremonies at the battle site helped her feel the spirits, name the dead, and eventually speak about the violence herself. 17. Robbie says healing includes forgiveness, but “not forgive and forget,” and she describes layers of forgiveness like onion skin. 18. Forrest and Lenore respond with stories about trees, grandmother kinship, and the idea that nature can be a place of restoration, prayer, and church. 19. Listeners interested in Native history, family trauma, and land-based spirituality would likely stay with it. 20. Listeners wanting a light Thanksgiving chat or a short casual interview would probably skip it.

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