Indigenous Social Work Field Education: "Melq'ilwiye" Coming together towards reconciliation

Abstract

This article describes a participatory action research project currently unfolding across five university/community sites from British Columbia to South India that is working to reveal, review and reconcile Indigenous social work and human service field education. Subsequent to a research development project identifying culturally safe practices in Aboriginal social work field education (Clark, Drolet, Arnouse, Mathew, Michaud, Walton, Tamburro, Derrick, & Armstrong, 2009) our intersectional research team set out to expand and center this Indigenous knowledge in five diverse university/community sites and begin a reconciliation process between mainstream dominant social work and human service theories, policies or practices that may be harmful for Indigenous students who are doing their field placements. The article considers how field education, and working by example, the researchers and the research project, can create fissures in the dominant normativity of this social work domain. The authors argue for an Indigenous intersectionality framework as an important component of reconciliation within social work field education. One of the goals of this research project is to center indigenous and local knowledges and to begin a reconciliation process within the social work and human service field education programs while maintaining strong commitments to social justice and activism.