Intimate Partner Violence and Intergenerational Trauma Among Indigenous Women

The establishment of the Indian Residential Schools by the Canadian federal government to assimilate indigenous peoples to European and Christian ideals has had generational repercussions on Canada's indigenous peoples. Many emotional, physical, and sexual abuses occurred within these schools resulting in significant trauma within this population. In order to shed light on these impacts, indigenous women were interviewed about their experiences with these schools. Thematic network analysis was used to analyze the data, and a number of themes emerged, including identifying the relationships between residential schools, intergenerational trauma, and the normalization of intimate partner violence (IPV) in domestic relationships. The findings add to the existing discourse on IPV in indigenous populations and may be used to inform violence reduction strategies.