Epigenetics: Scientific Evidence of Intergenerational Trauma

By Ruth Hopkins  Originally published November 26, 2011

 

Shortly after his second birthday, my son stopped talking. The onset of symptoms was just that abrupt. After nearly two years of visits to doctors and specialists, he was finally diagnosed with atypical autism.
 

Autism encompasses a spectrum of psychological disorders in which the use of language, reaction to stimuli, interpretation of the outside world, and the establishment of social relationships are difficult and unusual. One in 110 children have autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and males are more likely to have it than females.
 

Autism is a complex disease with no single known cause. The range of disorders that autism comprises is such that no two children who’ve been diagnosed with autism are the same. Autism arises from a mixture of genetic and environmental factors, which as of yet, have not been clearly delineated.
 

Epigenetics, a relatively new field in science, could help define the causes of Autism and offer up new modes of treatment for the disorder, as well as other diseases like cancer, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and diabetes. Epigenetics is the study of gene expression governed by the epigenome, the cellular material that sits on top of our genetic code. The epigenome does not change the genetic code inscribed in our DNA; rather, it activates or silences genes through the mobilization of molecules called methyl groups. These chemical changes are triggered by our environment. Toxins, pollutants, changes in diet, deficiencies in prenatal nutrition, and exposure to stressors alters the way our genes are expressed through the epigenome. Furthermore, epigenetics has proven that these changes in gene expression are passed down to our offspring, for at least one generation. Epigenetics renders the argument of nature vs. nuture moot because it establishes that the two are are inextricably intertwined. In regards to human development, one is as important as the other.
 

We know that negative behaviors like smoking cigarettes, poor diet, or drinking access amounts of alcohol shortens our lifespan, but now epigenetics is confirming that these behaviors can predispose our children, and even our grandchildren, to similar diseases and decrease their longevity too.
Research in epigenetics reveals that both paternal and maternal toxic environmental exposures play a role in the development of disease in their offspring and future generations. Parental exposure to the popular herbicide Roundup has been linked to birth defects in their offspring. Vietnam veterans who were exposed to the herbicide agent orange, like my father was, pass on an increased risk for spina bifida and other diseases to their children. The prenatal nutrition of mothers has been shown to have an impact on an offspring’s risk of diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. A study on the eating habits of multiple generations of families in Sweden revealed that grandfathers who went from a normal diet to regularly overeating had grandsons who died an average of six years earlier than the grandsons of those who didn’t. The bottom line is this: your grandparents’ and parents’ behaviors, and any toxins or trauma they were exposed to, affects your health directly. Likewise, your behaviors and any toxins or trauma you’re exposed to could affect the health of your children and grandchildren.
 

Epigenetics may provide hard scientific evidence of intergenerational trauma among American Indians and link it directly to diseases that currently afflict us, like cancer and diabetes. The term “intergenerational trauma” has been used to describe the cumulative effects of trauma experienced by a group or individual that radiates across generations. For natives, intergenerational trauma has presented itself in the form of genocide, disease, poverty, forced assimilation via removal of children from their families to boarding schools, the seizure and environmental destruction of homelands, and other routes of European colonization. The effects of intergenerational trauma include substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and a variety of other emotional problems. Emotional stress has also shown to effect gene expression via the epigenome. Studies show that the withholding of affection by a mother elicits brain changes in her infant that impairs their response to stress as an adult.
 

Epigenetics offers remarkable potential for the prevention of disease among American Indians as well. We can use epigenetic inheritance to restore the action of our genetic code from one generation to the next. Once environmental stressors are removed and behavior is corrected, our DNA will revert to its original programming. We could cure diabetes through behavioral changes that allow our epigenome to operate correctly. The elimination of toxins and pollutants could greatly reduce the incidence of cancer and birth defects. Such modification of environmental exposures and behaviors will restore and even improve the overall health and capacity of our genetic line.
 

As for my son, further research in epigenetics may soon decipher the specific mixture of genetics and environmental exposures that lead to Autism Spectrum Disorders. Along with other scientific discoveries, we are hopeful that such studies will develop treatment that will lessen the severity of the symptoms that make his life difficult. Until that time, we’ll continue to love and nurture our son, and thank the Creator for entrusting us with such a miraculous, artistically talented child, whose brave struggle to learn how to express emotions like anger and love inspires everyone around him.
 

Ruth Hopkins (Sisseton-Wahpeton/Mdewakanton/Hunkpapa) is a writer, a pro-bono tribal attorney, a science professor, and a columnist for the Indian Country Today Media Network. She can be reached at cankudutawin@hotmail.com

Read more: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/ict_sbc/epigenetics-scientific-evidence-of-intergenerational-trauma#ixzz1f0XmUrMD

How much I changed (Part 7) Scared Silent, Four Traumas, PTSD

Family Photo

By Trace L Hentz (DeMeyer)

(Part 7)

I have met quite a few adoptees who can’t talk about being adopted. Why? They can’t put feelings into words. They didn’t talk about it as a kid and they never learned how to talk about it as an adult.

They might be as confused as I was when I was a child hearing that I was adopted - this was before first grade. What did “adopted” mean? Somehow I got it -  these were not my parents, someone else was. But who? And why?

I got used to hearing we “adopted” Trace.

They'd explained I had a different mother and father. I don’t think I took the news well at all. I sat with it a long time. All I could imagine was “bad.” Nothing  good. Something bad happened or else I wouldn’t be there. Later I was very pissy and unhappy about it. I don’t remember exactly how I acted but I do remember my a-mom Edie would tell me I didn’t like her. I never recall saying to her “I want to go home and leave here” but I would have acted out my hurt and confusion, because I had no words for what I was feeling!  She took it that I didn’t like her. (Which was the groundwork for guilt which I did feel...)

Now that we have the internet and many new ways to find useful information, I read adoptees are more traumatized than a prisoner of war. That’s right. It’s called PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder. A prisoner of war may escape or be released, but an adoptee may suffer their entire life.

(The following is taken from my memoir ONE SMALL SACRIFICE)

I believe there are four distinct traumas in being an adoptee. They are: 1) in utero, when you feel what is happening to you or sense what is coming; 2) when you are delivered, abandoned, and handed to strangers; 3) later when you are told you are adopted and realize fully what it means; and 4) when you realize you are different, from a different culture or country, and you can’t contact your people, or know them, or have the information you need to find them.

It took me years to get this. (The adrenals do go into over-drive, the fight-or-flight syndrome.)

Some adoptees are scared silent - they are not able to communicate any emotions they feel. This is the adoption fog.  

Then some adoptees are afraid to meet their birthparents -  afraid to know why they were given up as babies.

Then we fear we might disappoint them! (Or in my case, I had no tools when I was told by my b-mother to never contact her again. How was I supposed to handle that?)

There are more traumas, too, that happen as you age – like when I’d fill out forms at the doctor’s office. I had no medical history. I had no idea if I was sitting next to someone who could be my biological brother, sister, mother or father. In my 20s it was terrifying to think I could marry my own relative! I could carry a gene or trait that I might pass down to my children – and I wouldn’t know until it’s too late. If my birth-parents were alcoholics (they were), then I really shouldn’t drink. I could be predisposed to diabetes or heart disease or cancer or depression and not even know. My list went on and on.

In 2006, I found out my birthmother had diabetes, another shock. I never knew anything about my mother’s side until the 1990s, then I met my dad when I was 38 in 1994.

Today I realize a powerful link exists between what I’m feeling and what happens in my body. There may be some adoptees who do not wish to face all this and go on as they are, holding on to these sad feelings and self-pity, rather than do the mental work to heal and go into reunions. Recognizing a pattern of belief is tough, partly because you gain sympathy by stealing (or sucking) energy from others when you act sick. Some call this co-dependent behavior. That is no way to live. You need to be your own person, self-energizing, and emotionally stable.

Some adoptees believe that when we meet first mother or father, all pain and agony will disappear. That sadly is just hope. That is not the way it works. A reunion is just one step on the journey and it helps, but there are many many more steps just as difficult.  It’s truly a test to get better.

Regardless of your ancestry, blood or skin color, adoptees can heal this.  But the only one who can fix you is YOU.

(to be continued)

Splitfeathers and Indian Child Welfare Act on Univision

Thank you to UNIVISION for partnering with Leland Morrill (Dine adoptee) and amazing researcher Karen Vigneault for this news broadcast about Lost Birds/Split Feathers, the Indian Child Welfare Act and current immigration issues which aired in late July. Also in the interview is Patrick Yeakey, (Sugpiak), an adoptee/Lost Bird who wrote in the new anthology CALLED HOME: Book 2: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects. The two videos are in Spanish...

:

Pasados Perdidos Parte 1: https://vimeo.com/102005237

Parte 2: https://vimeo.com/102188730

Leland said they will be adding English subtitles soon....

 

Pasados Perdidos Parte 1 from Andres Pruna on Vimeo.

Judge rules against destruction of residential school records

 By Kathleen Martens
 APTN Investigates

WINNIPEG – A Toronto judge has agreed to lock up sensitive residential school student testimony for 15 years.
Justice Paul Perell of the Ontario Superior Court ruled in a decision released yesterday (Aug. 6) that the records will be destroyed after that time period unless survivors individually decide they want theirs saved.
What is not up to survivors, however, is whether the names of alleged abusers are blacked out. The judge ruled those names will be redacted whether survivors want them identified or not.
Those alleged abusers are people who worked at the schools or other students.
Survivors’ records would be kept at the National Research Centre on Residential Schools at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.
Perell’s decision comes after two parties in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSAS) asked him for direction last month. They were: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which wants all the information saved for a complete record on the legacy of residential schools; and the Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat (IRSAS), which wants the testimony destroyed.
The judge said survivors can opt in or opt out of the record keeping. He then charged the TRC with collecting survivors’ responses.
The TRC had asked the judge for a 30-year waiting period, while IRSAS wanted survivor testimony destroyed immediately. Its senior adjudicator Dan Shapiro said survivors were guaranteed confidentiality so they would reveal as much information as possible to prove their financial claims for abuse.
Both parties have different mandates under IRSAS: the TRC’s is to gather survivors’ stories publicly and use them for educational and historical purposes, while IRSAS is to process abuse claims under the Independent Assessment Process (IAP).
IRSAS says it has accumulated about 800,000 pieces of information from nearly 38,000 IAP claims. These include IAP forms, transcripts and audio recordings of hearings, decisions, and tens of thousands of supporting medical, education, employment, corrections and other personal records.
Justice Perell is one of the nine supervising judges of the IRSSA.

As APTN Investigates has reported in this story, some survivors favour saving their stories so their suffering is not forgotten. The entire 68-page decision can be read on the website of Ontario lawyer, Julian Falconer.
Shapiro responded to the decision in a written statement, saying he was pleased with Justice Perell’s decision.

Investigates | 07. Aug, 2014 by tlamirande

LOST BIRDS: Four adopted women seek out their Native American roots

by The Fault Lines Digital Team

For more than one hundred years, U.S. policies and practices separated Native American children from their families. Prior to 1978, when the Indian Child Welfare Act went into effect, Native American children were regularly plucked from their homes and sent to live with non-Natives. Some children grew up surrounded by love; others suffered enormous hardships. Many had a powerful desire to reconnect with the culture that they had lost.
In "Lost Birds," we profile four adopted women who sought out their Native American roots. Click below to read the stories of how each woman came to discover and connect with her true heritage.

Please Share This: http://alj.am/1lE3sZT

My friends Suzie Fedorko, Julie Missing and Diane Tells His Name are in this story with me!   It's pure awesome.... Click on the arrows to hear us talk about our lives!  Trace

Suzie's memoir

My memoir

How much I changed (Part 6) #Starved into submission

By Trace Hentz

My entire childhood I had plenty of food.

This is not true for all humans, I know. Look at the news across the world, like in Gaza.

When it comes to this blog or writing about adoption or world events, I know I’m doing something right if I am afraid.

I spent most of my life afraid of upsetting people, avoiding that. Some might say that is low self-esteem but I think being afraid, fear itself, is a call to action. If you are afraid, then you know you are doing something right.  You are challenging yourself and breaking down your thoughts into something you can fix or not.

I could not change what happened in my childhood but I could change how I looked at being adopted. I could drop judgment. I could stop blaming my adoptive parents and my natural parents. I could turn “being adopted” into something good - or try to make my life and other lives better.

I heard Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now today describe how the occupiers of Palestine are using food insecurity to keep Palestine children alive but not enough to thrive! Too little food and starvation can be used as a weapon of war - with long-term consequences. Brains and bodies are affected long-term.

That is exactly what has happened here on American soil. YES! The American government only feeds American Indians junk with commodities (boxed or canned food and very little vegetables). The diabetes epidemic is living proof it’s working. Plus there are not enough jobs to feed ourselves. That way we Indians will be too weak to protest reservation living conditions. That way we’ll stay depressed or immobile. That way we’ll self-medicate with alcohol or drugs. That way many of our men will be imprisoned. That way we won’t be in the way when the government and industry wants to take more resources like copper, coal, uranium and shale gas.  Reservations were purposefully isolated so American (and Canadian) governments could totally control what we received - especially food, blankets, housing, medical care, etc.

Governments still keep Indians poor. The occupiers claimed they wanted Indians to be farmers, settle in one place, but not exactly on “farm-able land.” Think of the Badlands, a dry arid remote place, not exactly farmland.

Most of us Lost Birds who were adopted out didn’t have food insecurity or starvation growing up. It was not something we had to worry about.  SplitFeathers/Adoptees need to realize the WAR is still being waged on Indians in many subtle ways.  And if we use our minds in a good way, and come together, maybe WE can tackle food insecurity on reservations that still exists!

Maybe just maybe being adopted out was destined to give us the mind and ideas and courage necessary to feed our tribal families who have been occupied and starved into submission.

Also published on LAST REAL INDIANS: http://lastrealindians.com/starved-into-submission-food-insecurity-occupied-tribes-by-trace-a-demeyer/

How much I changed (Part 5) #adoptionsurvivors

I gave this interview some time ago but my thoughts still stand...Trace
Take a read:

Excerpt:


Interview with Australian blogger ONCE WAS VON in 2011
old link: http://eag-oncewasvon.blogspot.com/search?q=One+Small+Sacrifice

Trace DeMeyer published her first book ONE SMALL SACRIFICE on the Split Feathers, the children taken from the First People of Turtle Island or the United States of America as it was renamed by those who claimed it. The Split Feathers (adoptees) were taken for education and for adoption in planned destruction of their Peoples. Many have not been found or found their way home. Trace includes the story of her own journey and tackles the difficult areas of adoption and the adoptee experience.

Von: In your life was there a pivotal event that changed you from being a victim of adoption to a survivor?

Trace: That is a great question because lots of people won’t recognize there is a definite shift from victim to survivor.
When laws restrict opening adoption records, these policymakers make us victims. There are many adoptees ready to know their family name, meet relatives and have reunions, but cannot because of adoption laws. Other adoptees, lulled by gratitude, may fear upsetting their adoptive family, and may not see themselves as victims of a corrupt unjust system.
The adoptee moves from victim to survivor when they decide to break the law, when they decide to regain and restore their own identity, and get their name. That’s a giant leap forward.
My becoming a survivor happened in stages, in a sequence of events. As a child I grieved. I promised myself as a teenager that I would find answers but it looked impossible with sealed records in Wisconsin. I felt overcoming my low self-esteem was first. In my 20s, I realized there would be “emotional processing” I’d need to do, slowly, over time. Opening my adoption records was very important in 1978 but troubling since I had no help to locate my parents. This was before the internet. I also had to face reality that I might not find them or my parents might not be willing to meet me. I never met my mother Helen which felt like a second rejection in the 1990s. I was almost 40 when I met my father Earl in 1994. Reunions (or not having a reunion) take time to process. Over the years, other adoptees were great teachers for me since there are no guidebooks for dealing with adoption trauma. There is so much to understand, obviously.
Writing my memoir, remembering everything again and adoption research changed me most – like a light bulb went on. I started to see adoption as an industry and a measure of control over a mother’s maternity and placed orphans in a state of emotional disgrace. Recognizing adoption as an institution, one that has outgrown its purpose, one that is damaging for mother and child, was perhaps my biggest transforming moment.

Von: You say in your book, that adoption involves many traumas, not just the one of the loss of a mother. Many of the things that happen to us, the damaging relationships, breakdowns and illness result from those traumas. How do we move from being vulnerable, to strength and survival?

Trace: In my book, I mention four distinct traumas for adoptees and I know there are more. Adoptee and natural parents are vulnerable to the billion dollar adoption machine that still manipulates us. I felt manipulated. Restricting us from meeting, laws which prevent our meeting, then add a dose of shame, judgement and misunderstanding, all deeply affects and even harms adoptees. I do write about this in depth in “One Small Sacrifice.”
Adoption is very isolating. Many adoptees like me suffered in silence. I see many adoptees create stories for their missing parents. If they do not know the truth, and never meet them, adoptees can stagnate emotionally and get trapped in illusions, lies and excuses. That is a very hard way to live. It’s very difficult to tell an adoptee what to do, or how to heal and overcome this vulnerability. I took small steps on my own and finally realized that there was only one solution – find the truth.
A closed adoption is the ultimate act of disruption. Because of my disgrace and orphan-status, I was not living emotionally well. I was not empowered as a human since the very act of adoption removed my identity. I made a decision to not live this way or accept the fantasy-land my adoptive parents and adoption industry created for me. I had to open my adoption, period. I would not give up.
It took me a long time to see how I failed myself with very troubling decisions and blamed Helen my birthmother for misery I had as a child. I fought the idea of being a disgrace. I fought feeling rejected by Helen when I finally found her. I fought very hard to heal myself, know myself and release judgment. Even as a teenager, I thought it was ridiculous to be expected to live a fantasy and project gratitude.
Finding the truth and meeting relatives moves you from feeling vulnerable to empowered, from victim to survivor.

(to be continued) How much I changed (Part 6) #Starved into submission #Food Insecurity #Occupied Tribes