[Photo by Larry Beckner.]
Eric Dietrich wrote this profile of Wendy Bremner, a Bureau of Indian Affairs victim specialist who understands ACEs. She points out a study that showed students at a middle school had an average of 14 adverse childhood experiences.
As is the case with other reservations in Montana, the Blackfeet reservation’s crime rates are well above those of the state’s other communities — “to the tune of two or three times higher,” in the estimation of Assistant U.S. Attorney Danna Jackson, the Montana U.S. Attorney’s office tribal liaison.
In Bremner’s view, much of the reservation’s crime is rooted in trauma suffered by the Blackfeet historically, including from starvation, disease and the 1870 Bear River massacre, which saw 173 noncombatant Blackfeet killed by U.S. Army troops and survivors abandoned with minimal supplies and shelter in subzero temperatures.
At times, she also said, Indian children were removed from their homes and sent to boarding schools — many notorious for their high rates of sexual abuse — disrupting the tribe’s ability to pass traditional culture from generation to generation.
...Even today, Blackfeet children tend to have far more traumatic childhoods than their off-reservation peers. One study, Bremner said, showed that students at Browning Middle School had an average of 14 “adverse childhood experiences” such as witnessing an assault. Nationally, a majority of children experience fewer than four.
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