What Disruption, Whose Status Quo? Non-Native Narratives of Victimization Surrounding a First Nations’ Land Reclamation

• In Event: 606 - Section on Social Psychology Roundtable Session (co-sponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Social Psychology Roundtables (co-sponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions). Table 01. Subjective Experiences

Abstract

This paper examines some of the ways in which the concept of ‘disruption’ is socially constructed, often by dominant political, economic and social interests in society. In this particular case study, dominant interest groups selectively adopted and manipulated versions of law, history, and victim narratives in order both to defend their privileges relative to others and to justify this defense. Local and national concepts of ‘disruption’ were thus constructed by relying on pre-existing divisions of race, class, culture, nationality and settler colonial status. In the face of evidence that contradicted their narratives of ‘disruption’, local and national non-Natives relied on a number of psychological dynamics, including denial, projection, and other behaviors that can be linked to symptoms of transgenerational, perpetration-induced trauma. The paper poses suggestions for ways that Westerners can move beyond past traumas of perpetration into a more creative (rather than destructive) way of being in the world.

Author

• Shana Siegel, Rochester Institute of Technology