The biological impacts of Indigenous residential school attendance on the next generation

Abstract

We investigated the biological impacts of Indigenous residential school attendance on the adult children of survivors, operationalized through allostatic load (AL); and the extent to which intergenerational trauma, operationalized through adverse childhood experience (ACE) score, mediated this association. Data were collected in-person from a university-based sample of Indigenous adults (N = 90, mean age: 28 years) in a mid-sized city in western Canada between 2015 and 2016. Associations were analyzed in multinominal regression models, with terciled AL and ACE scores as outcomes. The cross-products of coefficients method was used to test mediation. Overall, 42.7% and 33.7% reported their mother and father had attended residential school; respectively. In an adjusted model, maternal, but not paternal, residential school attendance was a risk factor associated with a moderate increase in AL among her adult children. The strength of this association did not change when the analysis was limited to mothers who raised their children. Maternal and paternal residential school attendance were each associated with increased ACE score among adults raised by survivors. However, ACE score did not explain the association between maternal residential school attendance and offspring AL score in mediational analyses. The present findings suggest colonial residential school experiences may have become biologically embedded, passed to subsequent generations, and exhibited through the dysregulation of allostatic systems among the adult children of maternal residential school survivors. Maternal exposure to residential school influenced biological dysregulation among her adult children in ways that could not be further exacerbated by her children's exposure to ACEs. The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission asked governments to acknowledge the impact of residential schools on the current state of Indigenous health. Our findings underline the importance of this call by demonstrating how the residential school experience may get under the skin to impact the health of the next generation.

Past mercury exposure and current symptoms of nervous system dysfunction in adults of a First Nation community (Canada)

“…Proportionally fewer older persons had attended high school, however, over half of those 30 years and older had furthered their education through post-secondary training programs (data not shown). In Canada, First Nation children were placed, often forcibly, in residential schools, with harmful effects on themselves and their families [ 64 , 65 ]. In the present study, no one born after 1978 had attended residential school; for those born prior to this date, 58 persons (50.0%) had been in a residential school, while for their mothers and/or fathers, it was 95.4%.…”

“…a Number (N) of valid responses (does not include don't know or don't remember and refused) b Likelihood Ratio Chi-square compares the relative frequency between age categories c Excludes students, stay at home parents and retirees effects on themselves and their families[64,65]. In the present study, no one born after 1978 had attended residential school; for those born prior to this date, 58 persons (50.0%) had been in a residential school, while for their mothers and/or fathers, it was 95.4%.…”

Indigenous Land-Based Approaches to Well-Being: The Amisk (Beaver) Harvesting Program in Subarctic Ontario, Canada

“…Acculturative stress is the reduction in health status for those who have experienced acculturation [ 3 ], that is, changes to the Indigenous culture as a result of colonization and the assimilative efforts of colonizers [ 63 ]. Assimilative efforts in Canada, such as legal assimilation (voluntary and involuntary), the residential school system, the “sixties scoop”, and environmental assimilation, have transgenerational impacts [ 2 , 3 , 64 , 65 ]. This was discussed by one of the Elders, who discussed the negative impacts that colonization had on youth, who were unable to experience on-the-land activities with their families.…”

Parent-Child Separations and Mental Health among First Nations and Métis Peoples in Canada: Links to Intergenerational Residential School Attendance

“…Operating from the mid-1800s until the 1990s, children in the schools experienced institutional neglect, overcrowded conditions, malnutrition, the spread of preventable communicable disease, as well as widespread physical, psychological, and sexual abuse and death [ 7 , 8 , 15 ]. The IRS system, together with other harmful government policies and practices, severed cultural, community, and family ties, disrupted the continuity of parenting, and has been associated with multi-generational impacts on health and well-being [ 13 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ].…”

“…Multiple pathways exist through which the children and grandchildren of IRS survivors came to be at elevated risk for negative health outcomes. Aside from the greater childhood and lifetime trauma associated with familial IRS attendance, negative outcomes have been linked to discriminatory public services [ 10 ], and socioeconomic, household, and community-level risk factors in subsequent generations [ 11 , 18 , 27 , 33 ]. Furthermore, IRS survivors were removed from their parental role models and traditional family practices at a young age.…”