Transforming Stories and Teachings Into Social Work Pedagogies

Abstract

Indigenous pedagogies involve seeking out various forms of indigenous knowledge and a commitment to learning and teaching our traditions, ceremonies, philosophies and values, land, and languages. This article validates the differing ways in which indigenous people are infusing indigenous pedagogy into social work education. This article introduces two aspects of indigenous pedagogy that needs to be emphasized by indigenous social work educators: (1) mentoring and nurturing student identity and belongingness and (2) land-based education. For those interested in indigenous epistemologies, this article is intended to provide an additional resource to understanding and practicing indigenous pedagogies.

Wáa sá iyatee. Yoo xat duwasaakw Naadli. (How are you? My traditional name is Naadli, which means new beginnings). I am a Tlingit/Tutchone indigenous man with roots in the Alaska and Yukon. I have been teaching in the School of Social Work at the University of Victoria in Canada for 10 years. Increasingly, indigenous people are entering into social work education and, as such, incorporating indigenous pedagogies into the academy are essential toward transformation, both in the way we engage in social work practice and how we live our lives as professional social workers. As an indigenous social work practitioner and educator, I am committed to centralizing indigenous epistemologies within social work education. I do this by ensuring that social work education includes indigenous cultural practices, ceremonies, and knowledge when teaching about indigenous children, families, and communities. Although I teach both non-indigenous and indigenous students, it is important for me to centralize indigenous pedagogy throughout and within each course.

Historically, pedagogies are often framed within Western ideologies and models. Therefore, indigenous people have the responsibility and constant need to redefine these terms to our differing contexts. Western forms of education have been a force in sustaining colonial ideologies that have continued to marginalize indigenous people and knowledge. Along with my peers, as indigenous educators we collaborate and share knowledge in an effort to move past Western hegemony and work toward redefining what is right for our survival, for our well-being, and for our children’s future.

Indigenous pedagogies have been around for thousands of years and are guided by a set of consistent and coherent ontological, epistemological beliefs and worldviews. Indigenous social work pedagogies include an analysis of the past, the present, and the future in order to develop and deliver curriculum relevant to indigenous social work. Due to the vastness of what indigenous pedagogies entail, this article is written as a way to further conversations within indigenous social work education to enable it to flourish and expand. There is much excitement and passion on the part of indigenous social workers, educators, and students to seek out various forms of indigenous knowledge and to continue with learning and teaching our traditions, ceremonies, philosophies, and values while reconnecting with our land, languages, and our responsibilities to all living things.

Although there are diverse indigenous pedagogical approaches, I suggest there are two aspects of indigenous pedagogy that need to be emphasized by indigenous social work educators: (1) mentoring and nurturing student identity and belongingness and (2) land-based education.

To illustrate the first point more fully, I share a story from a friend and colleague Anishinabe scholar, John Borrows, University of Victoria, British Columbia (BC). In his scholarship, John draws upon storytelling as method to illustrate transformation of community, and in this sense, this story below shows how social workers can draw upon cultural stories to transform their practice that would enhance the well-being of their communities. John was first told this story by Basil Johnston, which involves Nanabush who is a spirit in Ojibway teachings and figures prominently in their storytelling:

A Nanabush comes to the community and sees there are problems there, he searches all around for the answer for what they’re dealing with in the community and doesn’t find it there. So what he does is he listens to the world around him and listens and hears what sounds like laughter. He follows that sound to its source and he realizes that it’s a brook and in the brook are some stones running over some other stones and it sounds like laughter. So he thinks about it for a second and he grabs the stones and puts them in his bag and takes them back to the community. He gets the community to stand around him and they’re hesitant to do so. They don’t actually come forward until the elders respond. The elders eventually respond to stand around him and he takes these stones that he has in his hands and he throws them up in the air; as they are up in the air, people think they’re going to be rained down on by stones and they will be fooled by Nanabush again, but in fact when they reached the highest point they transform. They become butterflies and they float around the circle of the people and while floating around the circle of the people, the little children that are around suddenly become transfixed by this and fascinated by it and suddenly they start laughing and jumping up and down and things that they weren’t doing before because the community was in such challenge. (J. Borrows, interview, 2010)

There are many meanings that this story offers, and I would like to formulate some of my reflections around this powerful narrative. In my interpretation of the story shared by Borrows, it is about metamorphosis—taking what is growing or in a preexisting form and nurturing it or allowing it to come through its developmental stages, like a caterpillar to a winged creature or a tadpole to a frog. It is what it is, but it is also what it can become if viewed in a new light and in a new way. Indigenous social work educators have the responsibility to interpret and impart new knowledge to students to continue to help nurture people to develop a sense of place, identity, belongingness, and responsibility through the past, into the present, and toward the future. As Borrows’ story shows, the journey of transformation might begin with fear and with unfamiliar sights that can change and transform to unlikely and unimaginable things. In this way, the transformation process in social work education often begins with the educator and leads the student to experience new revelations, ways of knowing, being, seeing, and doing that are not usually addressed in Western education.

This form of transformational pedagogy is particularly important because of the displacement experienced by many indigenous people of and from their traditional ways of being and knowing as a result of colonization. Historically and contemporaneously, the displacement and fragmentation of indigenous peoples are situated within colonial structures and processes. Some of these structures and processes include the Indian Act, Residential Schools, the forced removal of indigenous children from their families and communities by social workers, and their subsequent adoption to nonindigenous families (Graveline, 1998; Monture-Angus, 2002; Qwul’sih’yah’maht, 2011). It is important that indigenous students who have been displaced through colonial processes learn and relearn about their identities through relationships with other indigenous people who have a strong sense of identity and are willing to share their cultural knowledge. Indigenous pedagogy includes processes and practices for students to explore their histories and identities.

With the increase in indigenous students attending postsecondary institutes today, I have observed how many are coming to know their identities, histories, ontologies, and epistemologies in and through colleges and universities. Coming to know “self” within postsecondary is their starting point of a new journey or transformation—one which carries important responsibilities for the indigenous educators who teach them. Therefore, indigenous curriculum includes aspects for students to become expansive in creating and fostering community and to ensure that we mentor in areas where students might not have knowledge of land, place, family, or ancestry.

I have been asked on numerous occasions, how can indigenous academic leaders facilitate transformative learning with students who are displaced from their homelands? I argue that it is incumbent on indigenous leaders to find ways to nurture, encourage, support, and promote indigenous identity and belongingness. Because many students may not have access to their traditional teachings, indigenous academic leaders have a responsibility to mentor and facilitate these students who are “coming to know.” One pedagogical tool that leaders can use is to model for students through sharing aspects of their own identity, teachings, and values.

Joyce Underwood, an elder and knowledge keeper in Coast Salish territory, Victoria BC, shared her perspective about the appropriateness or effectiveness to teach students, who do not know their own culture, about her own cultural traditions. Elder Joyce shared it is important to share knowledge and as such she shares her cultural practices within ceremony, such as the sweat lodge, to a diverse group of students. When students experience this ceremony, this encourages them to learn their own ceremonies and to be respectful of diverse indigenous knowledge. Reflecting on the teachings she has received from other indigenous nations, Green (2013) writes that, “due to the generosity of my cultural teachers/friend and family … I learned that philosophies of respect, responsibility, reciprocity, accountability, honor and love are core and common attributes within our various cultural teachings” (p. 8). To that end, it is essential that pedagogy of belonging include respect for diverse indigenous identities, histories, and cultural knowledge.

Students might then feel empowered to return to their territories and know what kind of questions to ask as part of their own coming to know. That is, students who learn about the identity of another territory they are situated in will then feel empowered to find out more about their own indigenous territory and learn how to ask the questions in pursuit of coming to know where they are from and who their people/traditional territories are and their traditions.

My second aspect of indigenous pedagogies includes discussions about facilitating transformative pedagogies to focus on, attend to, and connect with land-based teachings. We also need to consider how land-based teachings can be privileged, valued, and assessed in Western academia. Certainly, there are many initiatives underway to achieve this, including identification of natural and invasive plant and fish species, culturally specific practices of harvesting natural resources, and the connections between land and indigenous languages, which have sustained indigenous peoples since time immemorial.

Indigenous social work educators need to continue to challenge Western hegemonic processes within the academy to ensure that land-based teachings are valued as imperative to decolonizing and transforming all aspects of indigenous education. Such land-based learning experiences such as totem carving; cutting, smoking and drying fish; canoeing; and involvement in Reiki ceremonies bring forth the values, beliefs, and epistemologies of our ancestors into the academy. Ultimately, such education fosters indigenous ways of knowing that subvert Western epistemologies and their concomitant pedagogical strategies. Teachings within the indigenous specialization at our School of Social Work at the University of Victoria privilege land-based teachings that include the essential elements of inclusivity, community building, and recognition and celebration of individual uniqueness. Although I privilege this pedagogy in relation to social work education, these land-based teachings are a “way of life” for indigenous people and, therefore, are essential in the field of social work practice when working with indigenous families.

In conclusion, indigenous pedagogies involve an important connection to identity, belonging, histories, place/land, traditions, and ceremonies (Battiste, 2000; Cajete, 1999; Rigney, 1999; Smith, 1999). In the story that Borrows relates of Nanabush and the butterflies, I contemplate the part of his story where the butterflies float around the circle of the people. I have exquisite visions of children who become happy and start laughing, and these images remind me that transformational pedagogies can evoke joy, healing, and become contagious. It is this contagiousness that needs to inform the relationship between educators, students, and the institutes of higher education. Finally, transformation is really more of a process rather than an outcome; for me, this is reflected through phrases like coming to know and learning “how to live a good life.” Who we are and what we do and how we do it are necessary components in our pedagogical practices and our quest for transformation.