Geographic Inequity: How it fuses into intergenerational trauma.
“The Break” by Katherena Vermette, illustrates how the rape of Emily, a teenager in Northern Winnipeg, is the byproduct of major issues embedded in the Indigenous community. A current issue in Canada is the limited access to mental health facilities in rural communities and the correlation it has to the display of intergenerational trauma in Indigenous communities. Intergenerational trauma is demonstrated in the book by manifesting through high substance abuse rates, high domestic abuse rates and broken families; “53.8% of children in foster care are Indigenous, but account for only 7.7% of the child population according to Census 2021” (Statistics Canada, 2021). All of these issues are interconnected. On a broader spectrum, “The Break” …show more content…
After investigating, I found that generally for rural communities, the statistics for domestic and substance abuse rates are higher. Therefore “The Break” addresses the consequences of geographic inequity and the role it plays in fusing into the display of intergenerational trauma. Most of the characters in the book were subjected to some form of abuse and in some cases that caused them to cope with that trauma through substance abuse which contributed into breaking some families apart. Elsie, although only a side character, supports this idea. Elsie, after being raped, gave birth to Phoenix and then Phoenix raped Emily. This is an illustration of the destructive cycle of intergenerational trauma. Were Elsie to have proper access to a mental health facility to cope with the trauma of the rape, she could have been a proper mother to Phoenix without engaging in substance abuse, and then Phoenix would not have been a perpetrator of such a cruel act. If these issues of sexual assault and substance abuse were addressed properly in the community of Northern Winnipeg, this would decrease the manifestation of
“The Break” by Katherena Vermette, illustrates how the rape of Emily, a teenager in Northern Winnipeg, is the byproduct of major issues embedded in the Indigenous community. A current issue in Canada is the limited access to mental health facilities in rural communities and the correlation it has to the display of intergenerational trauma in Indigenous communities. Intergenerational trauma is demonstrated in the book by manifesting through high substance abuse rates, high domestic abuse rates and broken families; “53.8% of children in foster care are Indigenous, but account for only 7.7% of the child population according to Census 2021” (Statistics Canada, 2021). All of these issues are interconnected. On a broader spectrum, “The Break” …show more content…
After investigating, I found that generally for rural communities, the statistics for domestic and substance abuse rates are higher. Therefore “The Break” addresses the consequences of geographic inequity and the role it plays in fusing into the display of intergenerational trauma. Most of the characters in the book were subjected to some form of abuse and in some cases that caused them to cope with that trauma through substance abuse which contributed into breaking some families apart. Elsie, although only a side character, supports this idea. Elsie, after being raped, gave birth to Phoenix and then Phoenix raped Emily. This is an illustration of the destructive cycle of intergenerational trauma. Were Elsie to have proper access to a mental health facility to cope with the trauma of the rape, she could have been a proper mother to Phoenix without engaging in substance abuse, and then Phoenix would not have been a perpetrator of such a cruel act. If these issues of sexual assault and substance abuse were addressed properly in the community of Northern Winnipeg, this would decrease the manifestation of