Pain, Postmemory, Porattam: Unpacking historical trauma and community healing through a decolonizing, arts-based participatory action research project with 2nd-generation Tamil refugee young adults.
Abstract
How do we inherit the pain of events we have not experienced ourselves? How can we heal and put an end to our generational trauma? For Tamil refugee communities in Canada, suicides have been on the rise among 2nd-generation young adults. Employing a Decolonizing Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology, the study investigates historical trauma and community healing among second-generation Tamil refugee young adults in Toronto, utilizing innovative arts-based methods such as memory box autobiography, body-mapping, and avatar-based community circles.
This dissertation is composed of five integrated manuscripts, in addition to introductory, body-map findings, and conclusion chapters, which aim to interrogate and decolonize the study of trauma with conflict-fleeing refugee populations, as well as to imagine what could be otherwise (but is not yet) prioritized in their community healing futures. The first manuscript establishes decolonizing theoretical foundations for this work. The second manuscript critically examines anticolonial perspectives on historical trauma, using Tamil refugee communities as a case study. The third manuscript introduces methodology as a form of repatriation, weaving personal and political positionalities to create healing-focused research methodologies. The body-map chapter and last two manuscripts present findings on how second-generation Tamil refugee young adults make sense of historical trauma and community healing. The fourth manuscript visually represents co-constructed memory boxes and highlights key threads in intergenerational healing. The body-mapping chapter reveals meanings and embodied understandings of Tamil refugees’ experiences with pain, porattam, and healing. The final manuscript uses avatar-based community circles to make visible a praxis of community healing for refugee communities, contextualized within a dialectic: where communities are required to live in both spaces of recognition and resistance to interlocking systems of oppression, as well as pursue radical hope for liberation.
This research advocates for decolonizing and liberatory approaches to intergenerational trauma and community healing, where there is deep commitment toward accountability, justice, and solidarity with oppressed populations with historical and present legacies of trauma. This work stands to inform pedagogy, programming, and practice for health professionals, researchers, and refugee-serving organizations. Overall, this PAR project intervenes to prioritize community healing and joy beyond the restraints of pain and survival.