Davidson Cowling, S. (2018). Culturally Responsive Social Work Methods for use with Indigenous People. PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal, 12(1), 3.

Introduction

The legacy of social work with Indigenous people in the land currently called America mirrors that of the greater colonial project – violence, coercion, and cultural erasure. The profession of social work in America has a long history of participation in the greater project of settler colonialism – non-Indigenous social workers and policy makers attempted to apply middle class European values to Indigenous communities and people, on a background of total ignorance about the colonial forces and historical traumas that have shaped modern Indigenous worlds. This lack of cultural understanding was and is devastating to the Indigenous people and cultures impacted, allowing significant harm to be done to Indigenous people by social workers ostensibly trying to improve lives.

Starting in the late 1800s, Indigenous families were forced by social workers and others to send their children to distant boarding schools, where the children were systematically stripped of cultural signifiers such as hair, clothing, and language. Unwilling parents were sometimes threatened by social workers with the removal of benefits if they failed to send their children. Abuse and neglect were rampant, and mortality rates for Indigenous students were six and a half times higher than in the general population, due to a combination of malnutrition, overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, and overwork. Another vector of state sanctioned violence has been the child welfare system, long used to undermine tribal sovereignty, erase tribal cultural knowledge, and to force assimilation of Indigenous people (Geary 2010). Ongoing generational trauma contributed to high levels of substance abuse, domestic violence, and attempted suicide amongst Indigenous people, and these factors combined with others to leave multiple generations of Indigenous people dramatically under resourced to raise children to be healthy members of their tribal communities. Some social workers used coercive means such as threatening parents with termination of welfare payments to remove Indigenous children from their families. Approximately 12,000 Indigenous children were adopted out of their tribal nations between 1961 and 1975, contributing to enormous cultural loss and intergenerational trauma.

To respond to this devastation, the practice of social work with Indigenous people must evolve, and this evolution must be centered on methods for doing social work created by Indigenous people, for use with Indigenous people, which respond to the trauma of colonialism. How can non-Indigenous social workers build a helping practice that does not further the intergenerational trauma experienced by many Indigenous people? How can non-Indigenous social workers approach work with Indigenous clients using methods that center Indigenous ontology, epistemology, and spirituality? How can we continue to move towards strengths based approaches, with a particular focus on methods that center Indigenous models of health and wellbeing?

In this paper, I will survey a few of the answers to these questions. I’ll describe the notion of Cultural Competence and what that means in the context of Indigenous people in the US. I’ll survey various methods for doing social work that have been created by Indigenous people and models for social welfare that center Indigenous strengths and spirituality. I’ll talk about some of the legal issues impacting Indigenous people involved with the child welfare system, the progress made in recent decades, and provide a Canadian example of response to that crisis. Lastly, I’ll interrogate these methods through a critical lens, and reflect on the role of non- Indigenous social workers in this process.