For me ok i really could be here in the stream today we continue our weeklong look at the Global Impact of colonialism can the pain our ancestors lived through be inherited some researches say yes and common symptoms include poor health fear anxiety Substance Abuse violence and suicide there are critics who say the science isnt solid and the evidence is anecdotal at best a growing study about the genetics has found that the experiences of those who went before such as trauma can leave a mark on your genes but is that enough to be passed on take a look at this primer from ted add on average an addicts and how some say it may affect trauma. Genes in d. N. A. Are expressed when theyre read and transcribed into r. N. A. Which is translated into proteins by structures called ribozymes and proteins are much of what determines a cells characteristics and function at the genetic changes can boost or interfere with the transcription of specific genes the most common way interference happens is that d. N. A. Or the proteins its wrapped around gets labeled with small chemical tags the set of all of the chemical tags that are attached to the genome of a given cell is called the epi genome even social experiences can cause epi genetic changes in one famous experiment when mother rats werent attentive enough to their pups genes in the babies that help them manage stress were methylated and turned off and it might not stop with that generation most of the genetic marks are erased when egg and sperm cells are formed but now researchers think that some of those imprints survive. So as always this conversation is for you in our community so in what ways has the trauma of colonialism influenced or maybe not affected your life so many of you have already answered that question with hash tag because colonialism and ill be sharing your responses throughout the week join our conversation on twitter or live on you tube its a breakdown the very complicated subject of intergenerational trauma in Melbourne AustraliaCatherine Chamberlain she is Principal Investigator of healing the past by nurture in the future and is associate professor at the huge if lumley center of the mother infant and Family Health research in new jersey lehman while but sui is a diversity equity and inclusion consultant and critical ethnography her and bioethicists hes a man rolled member of the Navajo Nation and in Dublin Island dr Kevin Mitchell is a new age in this assist our associate professor of developmental neuroscience Internet Access at Trinity College in dublin is also author of inmate how the wiring of our brain shapes who we are i am not in the least bit intimidated by ad guests lined up. Kevin help us out here with epigenetics what is a simple way to understand how it works for example what you share with our International Audience well so i think the primer that you showed there gave a pretty good overview of the basic idea that at beach in attics is a mechanism for turning genes on or turning them off and during development of an embryo that that has to happen so that different cell types can express different proteins so muscle cells become different from nerve cells and different from blood cells and so on and thats not the only way it happens so our genes also get regulated in response to experience so one example would be if i go out in the sun for enough time i can get a sun tan i know it doesnt look like it but i can. And that basically is a molecular change in my cells but is. Turning on some genes that produce the pigment that that is bizzle in the skin and that change lasts for a while it lasts for you know weeks to months now some people think that that kind of change can last a lifetime or were even be inherited to the next generation but i think if you think about that example of a suntan clearly thats not going to be inherited by my children or for my grandchildren so when it comes to the idea of its you know epi genetics regulating our psychology in ways thats passed down molecularly through the generations im really a skeptic about that though im perfectly. Absolutely convinced that the of you know the intergenerational effects of trauma that can be mediated through social and cultural and historical and psychological and familial effects i just dont think that we need to invoke this molecular mechanism of epigenetics to try and explain that. How does epigenetics to how its so i grew up on the navajo reservation in new mexico and in the region that i grew up there are 3 coal powered perfectly its so all of the. Air pollution that is happening is having an effect on current generation so if there could be a chance of some sort of bonded cation or impact on the genes of the people who are breathing that air and it could modify their genes and that could be passed down to their children as so forth and so d while i understand sent an example there theres also the fire admit that they can have an impact on our allies and that we can pass on to our children and cheaters generations and so this is a personal. Subject area for me because i also look at the historical trauma of the Government Boarding School experience that my parents and some of my grandparents had and in these government 40 schools they were d subjected to all sorts of busa verbal d physical and sexual and so that had an impact on their mind its in their psyches which is why sometimes people think that Indigenous People or ever regional people are antieducation antiscience its not that were antieducation antiscience we have a distress of the government and other governmental entities but were breaking through that trust but were also not antiscience were actually trying to democratize Scientific Research so that its a couple and really tangible to our community its the example that you gave of. Indigenous communities and how it relates to them now is something that resonates with our Online Community i wanted to share this from isis who says because colonialism black people are still living with generational trauma the effects of a cruel system that dehumanizer ancestors colonialism is still visible today the system it created is still in existence our people are suffering and living in abject poverty so she mixes a few things there but catherine i wanted to to give this one to you to ask what is the link between abbot and that its an intergenerational drama how are those 2 things related to fit all. Well im not method if you geneticist im an epidemiology just so we look at the patterns of disease i think oh only the epigenetics 2. To the eyes by which to talk about but certainly in terms of the patterns of. Intergenerational trauma that were saying there is really strong and strong epidemy logical evidence. From a my backgrounds inmate were free before coming into Public Health and the case from a to b. Understanding it is to understand that trauma is related to an actual human survival mechanisms and to think about it in you know tens of millions of years what if we had to die just of our lives and essentially its related to 3 mind things al fear same teso f. Ought fought and fought responses need to do we have to remember that as human beings when in my successful spaces in the on the planet in terms of survival so those instincts are really strong so. We have you know really strong fight flight in front responses that relate to childhood trauma and when they activate it they have its 500 times about 500 times faster than conscious thought and it overrides Everything Else in the body and once that has been activated in response to a one initial threat that might have occurred at any stage during somebodies life even you know a new drug or in bed with we know that that can be activated really more red lace i for example even here in a strata with some floods we had a year or 2 of the babies were born at that time had haya. Cortisone levels then than before so there are maybe at an ongoing effects of any exposure all threat particularly in Early Childhood and we can override that without. You know we that prefer their brand. But that can be like a bright in some wise but it is very strong on a survival instincts and the other thing i think thats really important to understand trauma is that were all social banks playing connecting with each other and socializing with each other is very important humans in particular we have very strong made for attachment and children when theyre born. With you know the edge of pain and on us for a long time on so when we if theres trauma that happens in that Early Childhood trauma that can conflict with the fought flight and for our response can im so glad that you mentioned that catherine because i wanted to share a personal story from a member of our community who talks about what trauma in his life has meant and where hes directed that so this is called the hes a journalist and author in south africa have a listen. Generation former intern original foreman who knew isnt true who you know this is the. Discrimination. And then you have them which are all 3rd 4th he can compose new year and buy of things like depression and anxiety hell be praised all that he can win situations and. Good for the environment and. Through him are you writing. Him into existence that can bring in my generation who never really had an opportunity so kevin thats one anecdote from a person who is dealing with his trauma but i wanted to share this thing that your thoughts on this is this is a tweet circulating online theres lots like it mark says fascinating study descendants of concentration camp survivors inherited adverse brain changes and hes citing a study that was done by researchers in the Czech Republic heres one from 21000 can see that headline there and another this 12015 descendants of Holocaust Survivors have altered stress hormones have and what do you make of a study like this and buying things like the yeah well i just can i just say in response to some of the things that the particular guests said they really laid out you know some of the psychological and social and cultural facts some of the biological effects of you know for example really Early Childhood trauma all on the person and of course those can be passed in a sense to the next generation through affecting the into relationship there and affecting the culture more broadly but when it comes to some of these discoveries that are trying to invoke these sort of epi genetic changes theres 1st of all i dont know why they want to it feels to me like you know its historians and sociologists reaching for the science the term but as if they knew. That to give some validity to there you know the descriptions of those experiences i dont think thats needed at all i think theyre completely convincing as they are where the scientific studies are really not convincing and ive looked into many of them in detail and they all d tend to suffer from some of the same methodological problems so they tend to have very small. The. Retinue diaz move on just didnt appear to have i made it. Out well this year and we can im going to have a. Share so i would have to push back on that because in terms of that they get to critique said and that some of these studies are too small that theyre not large scale however thats what i go back to the point of why i became involved in this work in this type of research is because we need to increase the number of digits people who are researchers and scholars and scientists so that we can start to address these questions and these challenges that we are facing and we want to make we want to be able to connect the dots between the traveler as well and d is an intergenerational trauma and thats why i and there are and i have read many of these studies and there are small small sample size sizes but thats why its an indigenous person and is this is adequate for increasing the number that scientists we want to do that so that we can have a larger scale studies to really really delve you know dig deeper and drill deeper so that we can define some of those d answers and that thats why the complimentary work that youre doing sure i completely i completely agree with that i think you know Indigenous People 1st of all need to be more personally involved in Many Research involving them and that we need to increase you know the number of people in samples and so on but you know its not just the small sample size that is the problem with some of these studies its that they tend to have a really vague hypothesis so rotten thing ok i think this particular gene is going to be changed they say i think some genes somewhere is going to be changed in some way in some of these people and so when you do the statistics then it looks like you know anything that comes out is significant but if youve done a 1000 tests youre definitely going to see something in a small sample that is just to test a gold noise and so all of these problems all. All of the studies suffer from the same set of methodological problems he has and are there is that there is an area way where you only because you come from communities of moving colonize so kevin you irish. Lee you come from the navajo tribes Navajo Community cathing tasmania agung was an area that was colonized i want to just get out of the stories the actually binding together rather the science the watchmans pots pushing you up hot. You stop the civil because i know that the s. N. As well i know you connect with kevin and i know you cant be katherine because the committees and have the same kind of subjugation tell me about. Cher im happy to i came into this work is it mentioned earlier is through d examining the ethical legal a social implications of Genetic Research and im not its analysis myself but my entree into this d work is really taking a look again at the loss of language and culture and thats what has happened throughout the world and weve had i think thats where we have something to common this 3 of us here were having this conversation today and because the loss of language theres a loss of culture and isnt teaching us people we some of us can still speak our language is we still are practicing our culture we still have a spiritual beliefs and spiritual systems and some of those answers that were facing now can actually be found within our cultural knowledge bases and that say they were and go back to time before precolonial contact but what im saying is that some of the the knowledge that we have from thats the best and i standpoint of perspective complements modern medicine Scientific Research i have to ask you this because we had this debate in our office and they say. Executive producer is irish and he was insistent that the i wish to colonize and they are still suffering from colonize ocean can you put that into was fast so international is understand sure you take a look at how i did it also i would also respond if thats ok yes. I think that they go ahead and i mean i think you know that very much echoing what what lee said there the most obvious effect is is on the language itself you know which was suppressed on her 800 years of english rule and is still you know not very widely spoken at all everyone learns irish in school but not not particularly effectively and so you know thats a huge part of the anchor of our own culture that was that was suppressed for all the time and of course you know the ne ne colony but emerging from colonialism house all of the issues of you know the Economic Issues where they they have been governed from the outside and now have to govern themselves and certainly the irish state went through you know a period of taken nearly 100 years now of independence and were are well on our own 2 feet but. You know that those those effects still you know took a long time to to get over economically and socially i want to share now their story as someone who references that idea of him taking a long time to get over and some people still not over it this is clement value a piece a graphic novelist in france and he shares his story with us. Rockys many about the Vietnamese Community the desperado that is. I got interested. In our story because of my father that is the reason that to flee vietnam during the war our started to dig into d. C. And of mr your story because you have no real idea about what happened to this part of my family to. Discover when the american war i was kind of surprised of whether i was discovering because a lot of fight where very. First kind of trauma if the story can never up and never be brought as simple as that so catherine keeping that in mind i want to share this with you on twitter says there is no reversing the damage so to speak and living with the glaring an unrelenting consequences hardly encourages healing the idea of reparations was once loaded but i think an apology is a good start this should be followed by visible change and western policy and this person specifically is talking about the continent of africa but i think many people can relate to this tweet but i want to pick out of that the healing how do you go about doing that. Well i think that there is absolutely hope for healing are here in australia before colonize i should we had really sophisticated ways. You know that children and. And culture are really kept to strong and connecting with each other and i think you know we are so we are seeing the effects of that of the last 100 couple 100 years of colonize i should say which is pretty recent compared to a lot of other countries and elevenths that has occurred but essentially i think getting back to remembering learning from our elders getting back to that culture thing and understanding it is going to be absolutely critical for our healing not death or any apologia i want to bring up a 4 letter that im telling a lie hands here love thats something that you talk about a lot and i think i feel if we do not mention that we would have done our job because you talk about that as a way of healing can you just very briefly thats all right at the end of this to explain what you mean by helping to heal entire generations you know so that sort of the focus of ou