There is sparse literature examining connections between songwriting and trauma overall, or specific connections between songwriting, trauma, the senses and place. This article presents a sense-bound and place-based approach to songwriting with and by asylum seekers and refugees. We facilitated a four-day songwriting workshop in Turku, Finland that incorporated traumainformed approaches, and whose outcomes we documented through ethnography. We responded to traumas of participants involving social isolation and relocation by encouraging use of sense-bound imagery-lyrics that communicate a multisensory experience of 'being there.' We demonstrate that songwriting can support refugees and asylum seekers in gently connecting to difficult places, while achieving respite from trauma via positive overall musical experiences. If approached in a traumainformed and-sensitive way, sense-bound songwriting that indirectly engages potential trauma triggers can offer a gentle path towards neutrally engaging the triggers-an essential step in trauma recovery.
This article examines the 2014 Navajo Nation presidential primary election and language debate as a window into the politics of Navajo heritage language and identity. Using
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