Using collaborative critical autoethnography to decolonise through “seeing” and doing: Social work, community engagement, and ethical practice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11157/anzswj-vol34iss2id905Keywords:
Collaborative critical autoethnography, decolonising social work, community engagement, ethical practiceAbstract
INTRODUCTION: This article reports on a collaborative critical autoethnographic study that we, two white settler social workers, conducted about our engagement with Inuit youth in Nunavut.
APPROACH: We facilitated three digital storytelling projects with youth living in three different Nunavut communities. By engaging in a collaborative critical autoethnography study, we were able to attend to the ways in which we were entering into communities, paying particular attention to the ways in which white supremist colonial thought has impacted our training and our locations within larger structures—shaped by colonising histories with consequences that mould day-to-day life and opportunity for the Inuit youth engaged in the digital storytelling.
FINDINGS: Through collaborative critical autoethnography, using individual research memos and guided dialogue, we considered the ways in which commodification was structured into our relationships, how these structures continue to be colonising, and consider the impact of the past and current colonisation. We also encountered the many strengths and resistances of the Inuit of Nunavut.
IMPLICATIONS: By bringing these considerations to light, we hope to enter into relationships with Inuit communities with fewer of the biases and assumptions that underlay and rationalise the structures that we have critically examined.
References
Adjei, P. B., & Minka, E. (2018). Black parents ask for a second look: Parenting under “White” child protection rules in Canada. Child and Youth Services Review, 94, 511–524. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. childyouth.2018.08.030
Affleck, W., Chachamovich, E., Chawky, N., Beauchamp, G., Turecki, G., & Séguin, M. (2020). Suicide amongst the Inuit of Nunavut: An exploration of life trajectories. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(6), 1812–1823.
Arbel, E. (2019). Rethinking the “Crisis” of Indigenous mass imprisonment. Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société, 34(3), 437–456. https://doi.org/10.1017/cls.2019.37
Arnold, O. F. (2012). Reconsidering the “NO SHOW” stamp: Increasing cultural safety by making peace with a colonial legacy. Northern Review, 36, 77–96.
Baldry, E., McCausland, R., Dowse, L., McEntyre, E., & MacGillivray, P. (2016). “It’s just a big vicious cycle that swallows them up”: Indigenous people with mental and cognitive disabilities in the criminal justice system. Indigenous Law Bulletin, 8(22), 10–16.
Battiste, M. (2018). Compulsory schooling and cognitive imperialism: A case for cognitive justice and reconciliation with indigenous peoples. In The Palgrave handbook of education law for schools (pp. 567–583). Palgrave Macmillan.
Bhattacharyya, B. (2013). How can we live with ourselves? Universities and the attempt to reconcile learning and doing. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(9), 1411–1428.
Blackstock, C. (2009). The occasional evil of angels: Learning from the experiences of Aboriginal peoples and social work. First Peoples Child & Family Review: A Journal on Innovation and Best Practices in Aboriginal Child Welfare Administration, Research, Policy & Practice, 4(1), 28–37.
Blackstock, C. (2011). The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on First Nations Child Welfare: Why if Canada wins, equality and justice lose. Children and Youth Services Review, 33(1), 187–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. childyouth.2010.09.002
Brown, I. (November 8, 2019). Nunavut education at a crossroads: Reflections on Bill 25 Nunatsiaq News. https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/nunavut-education- at-a-crossroads-reflections-on-bill-25/
Brunner, C. (2016). Knowing suicide terrorism? Tracing epistemic violence across scholarly expertise. Ethiopian Renaissance, 3(1), 3. http://ejol.aau.edu.et/index.php/ ERJSSH/article/view/1701/1206
Cernat, M. (2011). The role of the university in the knowledge society: Ethical perspectives on academic research in the age of corporate science. Lex Et Sciencia International Journal, 1(18), 293–302.
Cowden, S., & Singh, G. (2015). The intensification of neoliberalism and the commodification of human need – a social work perspective. Critical and Radical Social Work, 3(3). https://doi.org/10.1332/20498601 5X14417170590709
Deerchild, R., Whyte, K. P., & Hunt, S. (2018). The politics of citation: Is the Peer review process biased against Indigenous academics? Unreserved podcast, CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/ decolonising-the-classroom-is-there-space-for- indigenous-knowledge-in-academia-1.4544984/the- politics-of-citation-is-the-peer-review-process-biased- against-indigenous-academics-1.4547468
de Leeuw, S., & Hunt, S. (2018). Unsettling decolonising geographies. Geography Compass, 12(7), e12376. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12376
de Montigny, G. (2005). A reflexive materialist alternative. In S. Hick, J. Fook & R. Pozzuto (Eds.), Social work: A critical turn (pp. 121–136). Thompson Educational Publishing.
Denzin, N. K. (2019). The death of data in neoliberal times. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(8), 721–724. https://doi. org/10.1177/1077800419847501
Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. Grove Press.
Fortier, C., & Hon-Sing Wong, E. (2019). The settler colonialism of social work and the social work of settler colonialism. Settler Colonial Studies, 9(4), 437–456.
Government of Nunavut, Representative for Children and Youth’s Office. (2019). Our minds matter: A youth- informed review of mental health services for young Nunavummiut. https://rcynu.ca/sites/rcynu.ca/files/ RCYO_MHReview_EN.pdf
Graeme, C. S. (2013). Indigenous health research and the non-Indigenous researcher: A proposed framework for the autoethnographic methodological approach. Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health, 11(3), 513–520.
Grande, S. (2018). Refusing the settler society of the spectacle. In E.A. McKinley, & L.T. Smith (eds). Handbook of indigenous education, (pp. 1–17). Springer.
Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 105–117). Sage.
Gubrium, A., & Turner, K. N. (2011). Digital storytelling as an emergent method for social research and practice. In S. N. Hesse-Biber (Ed.), Handbook of emergent technologies in social research (pp. 469–491). Oxford University Press.
Hall, S. (2011). March of the neoliberals. http://www. theguardian.com/politics/2011/sep/12/march-of- theneoliberals
Hallenbeck, J. (2015). Returning to the water to enact a treaty relationship: The Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign. Settler Colonial Studies, 5(4), 350–362.
Hiller, C. (2016) Tracing the spirals of unsettlement: Euro- Canadian narratives of coming to grips with Indigenous sovereignty, title, and rights. Settler Colonial Studies, 4(4), 1-26. DOI:10.1080/2201473X.2016.1241209.
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. (2014). Comprehensive report on the social determinants of Inuit health in Canada. https:// www.itk.ca/social-determinants-comprehensive-report/
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. (2020). Inuit post-secondary education strategy: Raising education attainment rates. Author. https://www.itk.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ ipse-strategy_draft_english.pdf
Kainamu, R.V. (2012, March 29). Indigenous auto- ethnography: Self-side. [Conference Presentation]. Nurses Wānanga Te Ao Māramatanga Māori Caucus Bi-Annual National Mental Health, Rotorua, New Zealand.
Kennedy-Kish, B., Sinclair, R., Carniol, B., & Baines, D. (2017). Case critical: Social services and social justice in Canada. Between the Lines.
Laverty, C., & Berish, F. (2019, May 23). Examining information literacy through a decolonising lens. [Conference Presentation]. The Workshop for Instruction in Library Use (WILU): Engaging Place and Practice, Winnipeg, Manitoba. https://wilu2019.sched.com/ event/LmiA/examining-information-literacy-through-a- decolonising-lens
Lepage, J. F., Langlois, S., & Turcotte, M. (2019). Evolution of the language situation in Nunavut, 2001 to 2016. Statistics Canada/Statistique Canada.
MacLeod, L. (2021). More than personal communication: Templates for citing indigenous elders and knowledge keepers. KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.18357/ kula.135
Marchildon, G. P., & Torgerson, R. (2013). Nunavut: A health system profile. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Mathebane, M. S. & Sekudu, J. (2018). A contrapuntal epistemology for social work: An Afrocentric perspective. International Social Work, 61(6), 1154–1168.
McCall, S. (2016). Land, memory, and the struggle for Indigenous rights: Lee Maracle’s “Goodby, Snauq”. Canadian Literature, 230/231, 178–195.
McGuire, M. M., & Murdoch, D. J. (2021). (In)-justice: An exploration of the dehumanization, victimization, criminalization, and over-incarceration of Indigenous women in Canada. Punishment & Society. https://doi. org/10.1177/14624745211001685
McKie, B. (2020). Decolonising citations: Help XWI7XWA create a template for citing indigenous elders and knowledge keepers in Chicago style. Indigenous Research Support Initiative, The University of British Columbia. https://irsi.ubc.ca/blog/decolonising-citations- help-xwi7xwa-create-template-citing-indigenous-elders- and-knowledge
McTaggart, R., Nixon, R., & Kemmi, S. (2017). Critical participatory action research. In L. L. Rowell., C. D. Bruce., J. M. Shosh., & M. M. Riel (Eds.), The Palgrave international handbook of action research, pp. 21-35. Palgrave Macmillan.
Merriam-Webster. (2021). Lens. https://www.merriam-webster. com/dictionary/lens
Mussat, L. (2016, February 22). Arctic peoples faced with new challenges. [Interview]. The French National Center for Scientific Research News (CNRS). https://news.cnrs.fr/ articles/arctic-peoples-faced-with-new-challenges
Newell, S. L., & Doubleday, N. C. (2020). Sharing country food: Connecting health, food security and cultural continuity in Chesterfield Inlet, Nunavut. Polar Research.
Ninomiya, M. E. M., & Pollock, N. J. (2017). Reconciling community-based indigenous research and academic practices: Knowing principles is not always enough. Social Science & Medicine, 172, 28–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. socscimed.2016.11.007” https://doi.org/10.1016/j. socscimed.2016.11.007
Nunavut Food Security Coalition, (n.d.). Food security: Rates. https://www.nunavutfoodsecurity.ca/Rates
Agreement between the Inuit of the Nunavut settlement area and Her Majesty in right of Canada, the Tungavik and the Minister of Indian affairs and Northern development, Ottawa. (1993). https://www.gov.nu.ca/sites/default/files/ Nunavut_Land_Claims_Agreement.pdf
Palmater, P. (2021). Mumilaaq Qaqqaq on her role as MP. Warrior Life, Episode 87. https://podcasts.apple.com/ us/podcast/mumilaaq-qaqqaq-on-her-role-as-mp/ id1434096503?i=1000509705578
Penak, N. (2019). Walking Toronto’s Red Road: The story pathways of indigenous social workers [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Toronto, ONT. https:// tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/97575/3/Penak_ Nicole_201911_PhD_thesis.pdf
Pryor, E. G. (2018). Gendering land and buen vivir: Transnational Mayan Performance, Theater and Docmentary Film. UC Riverside. ProQuest ID: Pryor_ucr_0032D_13354. Merritt ID: ark:/13030/m5n927m3. https://escholarship.org/uc/ item/4160g8gh
Qaqqaq, M. (2017). Trina Qaqqaq in House of Commons, March 8, 2017. [Youtube video]. https://youtu.be/ qoeZw8FbtTU
Qaqqaq, M. (2020). “Sick of Waiting”. A report on Nunavut’s housing crisis. Author. https://www.aptnnews.ca/wp-content/ uploads/2021/03/Qaqqaq.HousingReport.2021-1.pdf
Quijano, A. (2000). Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social [Coloniality of power and social classification]. Journal of World-Systems Research 6(2), 342–386.
Rasool, S., & Harms-Smith, L. (2021): Towards decoloniality in a social work programme: A process of dialogue, reflexivity, action and change, Critical African Studies, 1–17. https://doi. org/10.1080/21681392.2021.1886136
Simonds, V. W., & Christopher, S. (2013). Adapting western research methods to Indigenous ways of knowing. American Journal of Public Health, 103(12), 2185–2192. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2012.301157
Sium, A, Desai, C., & Ritskes, E. (2012). Towards the “Tangible unknown”: Decolonisation and the indigenous future, decolonisation. Indigeneity, Education, and Society, 1, I-XIII.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A reader (pp. 66–111). Columbia University Press.
StatsCanada. (2016). https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily- quotidien/171025/mc-a001-eng.htm
Talaga, T. (2018). All our relations: Finding the path forward. House of Anansi.
Tamburro, A. (2013). Including decolonisation in social work education and practice. Journal of Indigenous Social Development, 2(1), 1–15.
Tuck, E. (2018). Biting the university that feeds us. In M. Spooner, & J McNinch, Dissident Knowledge in Higher Education (pp. 149–167). University of Regina Press.
Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40.
Van Katwyk, T., & Case, R. (2016). From suspicion and accommodation to structural transformation: Enhanced scholarship through enhanced community-university relations. Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 2(2), 25–43.
Van Katwyk, T., Wong, V., & Geiger, G. (2020). Expression of story: Ethical considerations for participatory, community-, and arts-based research relationships. Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work, 32(4), 145–157.
Walia, H. (2014). Undoing border imperialism. AK Press.
Whitinui, P. (2014). Indigenous autoethnography: Exploring, engaging, and experiencing “self” as a Native method of inquiry. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 43(4), 456–487.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
By completing the online submission process, you confirm you accept this agreement. The following is the entire agreement between you and the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers (ANZASW) and it may be modified only in writing.
You and any co-authors
If you are completing this agreement on behalf of co-authors, you confirm that you are acting on their behalf with their knowledge.
First publication
By submitting the work you are:
- granting the ANZASW the right of first publication of this work;
- confirming that the work is original; and
- confirming that the work has not been published in any other form.
Once published, you are free to use the final, accepted version in any way, as outlined below under Copyright.
Copyright
You assign copyright in the final, accepted version of your article to the ANZASW. You and any co-authors of the article retain the right to be identified as authors of the work.
The ANZASW will publish the final, accepted manuscript under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This licence allows anyone – including you – to share, copy, distribute, transmit, adapt and make commercial use of the work without needing additional permission, provided appropriate attribution is made to the original author or source.
A human-readable summary of the licence is available from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, which includes a link to the full licence text.
Under this licence you can use the final, published version of the article freely – such as depositing a copy in your institutional research repository, uploading a copy to your profile on an academic networking site or including it in a different publication, such as a collection of articles on a topic or in conference proceedings – provided that original publication in Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work is acknowledged.
This agreement has no effect on any pre-publication versions or elements, which remain entirely yours, and to which we claim no right.
Reviewers hold copyright in their own comments and should not be further copied in any way without their permission.
The copyright of others
If your article includes the copyright material of others (e.g. graphs, diagrams etc.), you confirm that your use either:
- falls within the limits of fair dealing for the purposes of criticism and review or fair use; OR
- that you have gained permission from the rights holder for publication in an open access journal.
