Table 1.

Comparison of Three Approaches to American Indian Historical Trauma

Approaches to AI HT	Organizing Ideas			Anti-Colonial Focus		Anti-Colonial Ambitions
	Colonization	Wellness	Indigeneity	Problem	Solution	Goals	Challenges
Clinical condition	Historical events cause psychological injury for living AIs	Trauma symptoms ameliorated via psychotherapy	Membership in a traumatized population	Intra-psychic	Psychotherapy	More effective clinical healing for AIs	Clarify clinical construct and explore diverse AI responses to colonial violence
Life stressor	Historical events create psychosocial risk for living AIs & repress protective cultural forms	Health improved via community programs incorporating protective cultural forms	Membership in a stress-affected population with cultural resources	Intra-personal	AI health and community resiliency	More effective health programs promoting repressed cultural forms	Distinguish community risk from AI social narrative and attend to socio-political dimensions of wellness
Critical discourse	Persistent societal arrangements erase AIs and naturalize dominance by settler state	Local ideas of wellness advanced via socio-political support for AI sovereignty	Membership in a tribal nation (not related to injury or risk)	Socio-structural	Critique of settler-colonial arrangements in psychology and health	AI emancipation and self-determination	Offer more constructive critiques in legible terms for cross-disciplinary dialogue

Note. Comparison of three approaches to American Indian (AI) historical trauma (HT) (clinical condition, life stressor, and critical discourse), in terms of organizing ideas, anti-colonial focus, and anti-colonial ambitions. Although presented above as discrete categories of engagement with the AI HT concept, each category reflects as a different position along a continuum from which researchers express common anti-colonial commitments with greater intra-personal or socio-structural emphasis.