YOUNG: The definition of trauma is that it is a repetition.

And sometimes the outright repetition of the violent event itself.

Sometimes it's the internalized represen- uh, repetition, the way that we see something happening again and again, in our mind's eye.

And I think, for urban Indigenous people, it's seeing a person's name on a school that you go to, the courthouse that you have to go to jury duty at, and knowing that history, and sometimes being the only person that knows that history, or feeling like you're the only person that knows that history, that I think exacerbates a trauma over and over and over again.

It can seem mundane.

It can seem like I'm just walking into a building.

But it's the cumulation of these things that can, I think, over time, lead to traumatization.

Um, and I think it's important to realize that these things aren't benign.

Cumulatively, they can lead to real harm.

Indigenous activists have a, I think, a really powerful and compelling point about the way the mural depicts Indigenous people.

But we have to be really careful and judicious about what we identify as traumatizing and not.

Trauma becomes the easy way to justify the erasure of things you just don't like.

GALINDO: I think this notion of protecting children from their own histories and their own traumas, I think it's an important one to consider.

But, at the same time, it's really important to give people the opportunity to know their own histories and to know where their own traumas might come from.

And it depends on what children you're protecting.

I grew up in public housing.

I witnessed drug abuse, I witnessed gang violence.

I witnessed, uh, people being shot.

I witnessed police brutality.

My family was a victim of police brutality.

I lost an uncle to police violence.

Is a depiction of violence gonna shock me or traumatize me further?

No.

It's gonna affirm my experience.

And it's gonna let me know that there's a historical precedent for this, and this is something that should be addressed.

These images motivated me to go out into the streets to protest, and to understand that it wasn't just me that this was happening to, it wasn't just my neighborhood, it wasn't just my family, but this was a systemic issue.