Decolonizing Social Work

Riding on the success of Indigenous Social Work Around the World, this book provides case studies to further scholarship on decolonization, a major analytical and activist paradigm among many of the world’s Indigenous Peoples, including educators, tribal leaders, activists, scholars, politicians, and citizens at the grassroots level. Decolonization seeks to weaken the effects of colonialism and create opportunities to promote traditional practices in contemporary settings. Establishing language and cultural programs; honouring land claims, teaching Indigenous history, science, and ways of knowing; self-esteem programs, celebrating ceremonies, restoring traditional parenting approaches, tribal rites of passage, traditional foods, and helping and healing using tribal approaches are central to decolonization. These insights are brought to the arena of international social work still dominated by western-based approaches. Decolonization draws attention to the effects of globalization and the universalization of education, methods of practice, and international ’development’ that fail to embrace and recognize local knowledges and methods. In this volume, Indigenous and non-Indigenous social work scholars examine local cultures, beliefs, values, and practices as central to decolonization. Supported by a growing interest in spirituality and ecological awareness in international social work, they interrogate trends, issues, and debates in Indigenous social work theory, practice methods, and education models including a section on Indigenous research approaches. The diversity of perspectives, decolonizing methodologies, and the shared struggle to provide effective professional social work interventions is reflected in the international nature of the subject matter and in the mix of contributors who write from their contexts in different countries and cultures, including Australia, Canada, Cuba, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and the USA.

Taking a new and innovative angle on social work, this book seeks to remedy the lack of holistic perspectives currently used in Western social work practice by exploring Indigenous and other culturally diverse understandings and experiences of healing. This book examines six core areas of healing through a holistic lens that is grounded in a decolonizing perspective. Situating integrative healing within social work education and theory, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from social memory and historical trauma, contemplative traditions, storytelling, healing literatures, integrative health, and the traditional environmental knowledge of Indigenous Peoples. In exploring issues of water, creative expression, movement, contemplation, animals, and the natural world in relation to social work practice, the book will appeal to all scholars, practitioners, and community members interested in decolonization and Indigenous studies.

How can mainstream Western social work learn from and in turn help advance indigenous practice? This volume brings together prominent international scholars involved in both Western and indigenous social work across the globe - including James Midgley, Linda Briskman, Alean Al-Krenawi and John R. Graham - to discuss some of the most significant global trends and issues relating to indigenous and cross-cultural social work. The contributors identify ways in which indigenization is shaping professional social work practice and education, and examine how social work can better address diversity in international exchanges and cross-cultural issues within and between countries. Key theoretical, methodological and service issues and challenges in the indigenization of social work are reviewed, including the way in which adaptation can lead to more effective practices within indigenous communities and emerging economies, and how adaptation can provide greater insight into cross-cultural understanding and practice.

Wícihitowin is the first Canadian social work book written by First Nations, Inuit and Métis authors who are educators at schools of social work across Canada. The book begins by presenting foundational theoretical perspectives that develop an understanding of the history of colonization and theories of decolonization and Indigenist social work. It goes on to explore issues and aspects of social work practice with Indigenous people to assist educators, researchers, students and practitioners to create effective and respectful approaches to social work with diverse populations. Traditional Indigenous knowledge that challenges and transforms the basis of social work with Indigenous and other peoples comprises a third section of the book. Wícihitowin concludes with an eye to the future, which the authors hope will continue to promote the innovations and creativity presented in this groundbreaking work.

In Decolonizing Trauma Work, Renee Linklater explores healing and wellness in Indigenous communities on Turtle Island. Drawing on a decolonizing approach, which puts the “soul wound” of colonialism at the centre, Linklater engages ten Indigenous health care practitioners in a dialogue regarding Indigenous notions of wellness and wholistic health, critiques of psychiatry and psychiatric diagnoses, and Indigenous approaches to helping people through trauma, depression and experiences of parallel and multiple realities. Through stories and strategies that are grounded in Indigenous worldviews and embedded with cultural knowledge, Linklater offers purposeful and practical methods to help individuals and communities that have experienced trauma. Decolonizing Trauma Work, one of the first books of its kind, is a resource for education and training programs, health care practitioners, healing centres, clinical services and policy initiatives.

Decolonizing Data yields valuable insights into the decolonization of research methods by addressing and examining health inequalities from an anti-racist and anti-oppressive standpoint.

This edited collection focuses on Africentric social work practice, providing invaluable assistance to undergraduate students in developing foundational skills and knowledge to further their understanding of how to initiate and maintain best practices with African Canadians. In social work education and field practice, students will benefit from the depth and breadth of this book’s discussions of social, health and educational concerns related to Black people across Canada. The book’s contributors present a broad spectrum of personal and professional experiences as African Canadian social work practitioners, students and educators. They address issues that African Canadians confront daily, which social work educators and potential practitioners need to understand to provide racially and culturally relevant services. The book presents students with an invaluable opportunity to develop their practical skills through case studies and critical thinking exercises, with recommendations for how to ethically and culturally engage in African-centred service provision.

Institutions everywhere seem to be increasingly aware of their roles in settler colonialism and anti-Black racism. As such, many racialized workers find themselves tasked with developing equity plans for their departments, associations or faculties. This collection acknowledges this work as both survival and burden for Black, Indigenous and racialized peoples. It highlights what we already know and are already doing in our respective areas and offers a vision of what equity can look like through a decolonial lens. What helps us to make this work possible? How do we take care with ourselves and each other in this work? What does solidarity, collaboration or “allyship” look like in decolonial equity work? What are the implicit and explicit barriers we face in shifting equity discourse, policy and practice, and what strategies, skills and practices can help us in creating environments and lived realities of decolonial equity? This edited collection centres the voices of Indigenous, Black and other racialized peoples in articulating a vision for decolonial equity work. Specifically, the focus on decolonizing equity is an invitation to re-articulate what equity work can look like when we refuse to separate ideas of equity from the historical and contemporary realities of colonialism in the settler colonial nation states known as Canada and the United States and when we insist on linking an equity agenda to the work of decolonizing our shared realities.