Conceptualising historical privilege: the flip side of historical trauma, a brief examination

Abstract

Historical trauma is an important and growing area of research that provides crucial insights into the antecedents of current-day inequities in health and social wellbeing experienced by Indigenous people in colonial settler societies. What is not so readily examined is the flip side of historical trauma experienced by settlers and their descendants, what might be termed “historical privilege”. These historic acts of privilege for settlers, particularly those emigrating from Britain, provide the antecedents for the current-day realities for their descendants and the structural, institutional and interpersonal levels of advantage that are also a key feature of inequities between Indigenous and settler. This article theorises an explicit link between historical trauma and historical privilege and explores how the latter may be examined with particular reference to Aotearoa New Zealand. Three core elements of historical trauma are posited as a useful framework to apply to historical privilege.

‘To honour the treaty, we must first settle colonisation’ (Moana Jackson 2015): the long road from colonial devastation to balance, peace and harmony

“…Māori have always known that laws constructed in the New Zealand parliament focus on maintaining power, wealth and privilege in the hands of the coloniser and on denying Māori rights (Borell et al 2018). That has not stopped us trying to have the courts that the Crown established hold that same Crown accountable for the atrocities committed against Māori.…”

Thinking differently: Re‐framing family violence responsiveness in the mental health and addictions health care context

“…To address institutional racism and the on-going impacts of colonization requires changing MH&A settings and the privileging of Western knowledge production systems that underpin practice responses (Borell, Barnes, & McCreanor, 2018), including a shift from trauma-BOX 7 : The normalization of racism As a child, the Department of Social Welfare (DSW) removed June from her wh anau and placed her in a family home run by a P akeh a (a white New Zealander) couple, Fred and Ethel. Her brothers were sent to a borstal.…”

“…To address institutional racism and the on‐going impacts of colonization requires changing MH&A settings and the privileging of Western knowledge production systems that underpin practice responses (Borell, Barnes, & McCreanor, ), including a shift from trauma‐informed, to trauma‐ and violence‐informed (TVI) practice. Importantly, TVI approaches bring an explicit focus to: structural inequities to avoid seeing trauma as happening only ‘in people’s minds’ but also in their social context; ongoing violence, as for many people violence is intergenerational and connected to the violence of colonization; and the responsibility of organizations to change as systems perpetuate harm (i.e.…”

‘Pissed Off and Confused’/‘Grateful and (Re)Moved’: Affect, Privilege and National Commemoration in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…In Aotearoa New Zealand, colonization continues to shape social relationships, cultural norms, and systemic practices, (re)producing a nation by and for the colonizer (Moewaka Barnes et al, ). Through the dispossession of land, marginalization, and attempted destruction of Māori economic, spiritual, and cultural society, Pākehā colonizers aggressively annexed power, developing a cultural hegemony that allows for the ongoing occupation of a range of intergenerational, heritable advantages across numerous areas of national life (Borell, ; Borell, Moewaka Barnes, & McCreanor, ; Durie, ; Gregory, ; Mulvey et al, ). Such privileges are at once ubiquitous yet simultaneously rendered invisible through entrenched cultural practices that both proliferate and protect Pākehā power (Leonardo, ).…”

“…As beneficiaries of colonization, Pākehā have gained not only material wealth through large‐scale land confiscations and theft of property, but also symbolic and cultural power through the Crown's institution of legal, economic, and other systems. Borell et al (), draw on literature around historical trauma to explore its flip side— historical privilege . Akin to the ways in which historical trauma affects descendants long after the traumatic acts have taken place, historical privilege surfaces ways in which benefits are shared across generations and the accumulations they generate such as intergenerational transfer of wealth and social position.…”