Indigenous Resistance in the Academy: Decolonial Reflections on Integrating Tribal and Indigenous Knowledge in Social Work Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55016/pt18dy92Keywords:
Social Work Education, Indigenous Feminist Thought, Decolonial Pedagogy, Epistemic Sovereignty, Land-Based Healing, Knowledge JusticeAbstract
Social work education, a field historically entangled with assimilation policies, continues to perpetuate colonial logics that devalue and erase Indigenous knowledge systems. While calls for “inclusion” are common, integration often remains tokenistic, failing to challenge the Eurocentric, heteropatriarchal, and capitalist ideologies at the discipline’s core. This essay emerges from our participation in a 2024 Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Annual Program Meeting session focused on integrating Indigenous knowledges into social work curricula. Using a “Reflection as a Method” approach grounded in Indigenous Feminist Thought (BlackDeer, 2023), we analyze the collective praxis of a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators. Our thematic reflections explore key sites of decolonial resistance: (1) shifting pedagogy from symbolic inclusion to sovereignty-affirming practices; (2) centering community-defined, land-based healing practices over institutional “best practices”; and (3) resisting extractive research logics by upholding epistemic sovereignty and relational accountability. We argue that integrating Indigenous knowledge is not only a reframing action, but a transformative, decolonial praxis of resistance and resurgence. We conclude with a call for social work education to move beyond rhetorical commitments and into material and epistemic practices that support Indigenous sovereignty and knowledge justice.
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