Vol. 13 No. 4 (2025): Special Issue: Abstracts from the 2025 International Indigenous Voices in Social Work Conference

This summer, August 12 to 15, 2025, the seventh International Indigenous Voices in Social Work was held in Calgary, Canada. Entitled, One Child Every Child: Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Doing, Connecting, and Being for the Well-Being of Our Future Generations. This event had more than 500 participants attending, supporting, and facilitating topics from Indigenous ceremonial practices, health and well-being, leadership, and system reform. These participants were from all over the world, including Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Norway, Taiwan, the United States, and Canada, sharing common global perspectives while remaining rooted in local and regional ways.

It was apparent that this conference remains a key contribution to strengthening Indigenous voices in social work. Being heard by attending members from the International Federation of Social Workers as well as many regional organizations, speakers continue to highlight and advance our Indigenous ways as important contributions for advancing practices that tend to be more holistic, land-based, and relational.

The Journal of Social Development emerged from the first conference. We are proud to be a continued contributor to this important, ongoing event. In this issue, we provide a few abstracts, reflections, and key findings from the more than 85 presentations that took place, as a means for others to get a sense of the conference, advance some of the shared ideas and experiences, and honour the amazing work of Indigenous communities and social workers. Hopefully, this issue will be an enticement for people to carry these ideas forward, reach out to development relationships, and support the ongoing relationship between the Journal of Indigenous Social Development and the International Indigenous Voices of Social Work Conferences.

-Michael Hart, JISD Co-Editor-in-Chief