The author locates the field of social work within an emerging literature surrounding the role of non-aboriginal people in decolonization. Locating assimilative thinking in the assumptions (#3 Figure 1) and obliviousness (#4 Figure 1) this paper explores Settler ontology – reflected in individual thoughts, social structures, and policy.
(( Figure 1 ))
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( 1 )
Know that I Know
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( 2 )
Know that I don’t
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( 3 )
Don’t know I Know
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Don’t know that I
don’t know
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Making use of three cultural examples of Indigenous concepts of self from Okanagan, Haudenashonee, and Lebanese traditions, the author questions a lack of guiding principles for Settler society. Focus is then turned towards an emerging ‘trauma informed’ literature that synthesizes the effects of adverse experiences on individual, family, and community developmental trajectories. From within these fields of neurobiology and psychology the author distills principles of respect, agency, the ability to love and be loved, as relational principles for healthy children.
Substantiated from within western thought, the author provides a framework to challenge the thoughts, service delivery design, and policy embedded within Canadian society to prioritize children and the generations to come. Without the future in mind our society is lost. Within this focus based on principles based in human need exists the possibility to live in a pluralist society described by Ermin (2007) as ethical space.
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