Collective Healings of Colonial Wounds: A Conceptual Framework from Indigenous Perspectives

Colonial violence is ongoing. It started with the first imperial invasions of Indigenous lands and continues harming communalist ways of life. Indigenous scholars think of the trauma of colonial violence as historical, connecting past, present, and future and wounding the spirits and souls of body-territories. Collective healings are ritual practices that strengthen or restore memories, identities, knowledge, and practices, reconnecting reciprocal relationships across beings and territories and alleviating colonial wounds. As such, collective healings processes support Indigenous resurgence in colonially wounded lands. As Indigenous knowledges, practices, identities, memories, languages, and rituals are strengthened, the body-territory rebalances what colonial violence disrupts.