Sexual Abuse: The Shadow of Colonization in Canada

• Main Author: Spence, Patricia Dawn
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Department of Psychology, Sonoma State University 2010
• Subjects: indigenous peoples of Canada; sex crimes in Canada; Canada; First Nations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10211.1/1449

This curriculum examines the reasons for the disproportionate rate of perpetration of sexual abuse within the Aboriginal community of Canada from a depth psychological perspective. Colonization left deep wounds within the first Nations of Canada. The infrequent but usual explanations of the causes of sexual abuse are not adequate when it comes to understanding this extraordinary situation. This means that an attempt must be made to understand the mind and unconscious attitudes of the colonizer. Advances in psychological thought over the past 100 years make such understanding possible. What did the colonizers carry within the deepest parts of themselves that they should have left such searing scars? Why was the Aboriginal soul so vulnerable to what is described in depth psychological language as the unconscious shadow of the colonizer? The trend in contemporary sociological and psychological thought is to exteriorize the plight of Aboriginal people by viewing the causes of social ills to be such things as poverty_ lack of education, unemployment, inadequate recreational opportunities for youth and such. These all have destructive consequences but, in and of themselves, they do not cause sexual abuse. It is the position of this curriculum that sexual abuse reflects the spiritual poverty of a barren Aboriginal soul, which to k into itself the shadow energy of the colonizer.