Browsing by Subject "Indigenous child welfare"

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    The Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies: Reducing disparities through Indigenous social work education
    (Children and Youth Services Review, 2019-02-28) Haight, Wendy; Waubanascum, Cary, B.; Glesener, David; Day, Priscilla; Bussey, Brenda; Nichols, Karen
    This research addresses one of the most pressing and controversial issues facing child welfare policymakers and practitioners today: the dramatic overrepresentation of Indigenous families in North American public child welfare systems. Effective, inclusive education is one necessary component of efforts to reduce such disparities. Yet recruiting students from various cultural communities to the field and educating white social work students and professionals to practice in culturally responsive ways are ongoing challenges. In this ethnography, we examine an apparently successful model of inclusive education: the Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies (the Center) at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Department of Social Work. For over a decade, the Center has graduated Indigenous and non-Indigenous child welfare workers with MSWs now practicing within tribal communities, as well as provided continuing education for child welfare professionals. At the Center, Indigenous scholars and social workers, tribal leaders and their allies design and sustain a model of honoring and integrating Indigenous worldviews with Western social work. Experiential learning – engaging the “heart and head” – is a cornerstone of the Center's educational practices. Students and professional colleagues are approached with a “good heart” as “relatives” with positive intentions. They learn about the spirituality, language, culture and history of Indigenous people. The strengths-based curriculum also includes challenging content on the legacy of genocide and historical trauma on Indigenous families and communities, as well as contemporary laws and policies such as the Indian Child Welfare Act. The educational worldview and practices of the Center provide understanding for social work, generally, and child welfare, specifically, that supports effective practice and policy within diverse communities.
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    “This is how we show up for our relatives”: Understanding how Indigenous relative caregivers embody traditional kinship to resist the colonial child welfare system
    (2021-06) Waubanascum, Cary
    This study responds to the gravity of the ongoing removal of Indigenous children, the intractability of colonization in the child welfare system, the glaring absence of Indigenous voices and their distinct experiences in the professional, empirical child welfare literature, and dearth of studies that implement Indigenous methodologies. Grounded in Indigenous Storywork and Aknulha (Mother/Aunty in Oneida) methodologies, this qualitative study sought to understand (10) Indigenous relative caregivers’ experiences with the colonial child welfare system, how they live their traditional kinship beliefs and practices amidst ongoing colonialism and their desires for Indigenous child welfare. Findings identified specific forms of colonialism still inflicted upon Indigenous children and families in the modern child welfare system. The child welfare system perpetrates ongoing removal and separation, a form of colonial violence as a vehicle for implementing assimilative practices. Relative caregivers also exposed how the child welfare system continues to impose the modern colonial gender system, continuing a legacy of government sponsored civilizing educations programs to assimilate through racializing and genderizing Indigenous families. Second, this study revealed, what Lugones (2007) called “sites of resistance”, the knowledge of Indigenous relative caregivers who are actively living our traditional intergenerationally transmitted kinship knowledge and practices to resist the child welfare systems and protect our children from ongoing colonialism, removal and separation. Implications for tribes, social work and child welfare are presented.