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In 2007, Amnesty International published a report entitled "Maze of Injustice: the failure to protect Indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA" (Amnesty 2007). This report is the result of a two-year investigation (in 2005 and 2006) among Native social activists, health workers, legal workers and Native rape survivors who testified on the state of violence against Native women in their tribal communities. This report also relied on statistical studies conducted throughout the U.S. by the Department of Justice. According to the report, "34.1 per cent of American Indian and Alaska Native women-or more than one in three-will be raped 1 during their lifetime; the comparable figure for the USA as a whole is less than one in five" (Amnesty 14). The document indicates that "According to the U.S. Department of Justice, in at least 86 per cent of reported cases of rape or sexual assault against American Indian and Alaska Native women, survivors report that the perpetrators are non-Native men" (Amnesty 16). These worrisome figures do not, however, reflect the reality of sexual assaults against Native women according to the Amnesty International investigators as not all rape victims report the rape as they are afraid of being re-victimized or ignored by the police. This fear is explained in the report as the expression of a lack of trust in official government agencies due to centuries of traumatizing relations with them.

Dans son roman Almanac of the Dead , l’écrivaine autochtone Leslie Marmon Silko s’engage dans des stratégies transculturelles d’analyse des sociétés contemporaines d’Amérique du Nord. Son projet fait tomber les barrières entre groupes culturels à l’intérieur et au-delà des frontières nationales des pays qu’elle représente et critique--en particulier les États-Unis et le Mexique. Ce projet prophétise la montée de l’internationalisme en tant que processus politique essentiel de remise en question, et à juste titre, de l’existence légale et de l’utilité des États-nations qui sont présentés dans le roman comme les principaux protagonistes de la désintégration physique, culturelle et économique des communautés culturelles (autochtones et non autochtones) vivant à l’intérieur de leurs frontières.

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This paper shows that Michelle Cliff's work puts Western trauma theory through the work of creolization. It critiques the inadequacy of trauma theory qua colonial theory in the process of understanding a historical trauma that centers around racial (and partially gender) difference. To do so, we look at Cliff's Abeng and No Telephone to Heaven in order to question certain givens in the field of trauma studies, reconceptualize the problematic theories of this Eurocentric frame of thinking, and promote the revision of the field's intentions in order to become productive in the postcolonial context. The paper also shows that Cliff takes her readers and characters through the difficult work of re-membering Caribbean history, a history erased by colonial fables. The dissemination of historical truths and positive images of prominent black characters which were, in the past, imposing figures of resistance, helps the readers and characters to reflect upon the damage done to the country of maroon warriors in the past and the repercussions of that damage on the present. This is one step in the process of identity recovery for the main character Clare Savage, whose progressive discovery and critique of social discrepancies based on racial difference and eventual struggle enable her to understand the historical trauma of her own people and use that trauma as the root for re-constructing a positive Caribbean identity.