Indigenous Relative Caregiver Experiences of Ongoing Colonization with the Child Welfare System

Overview: This study examines Indigenous relative caregiver experiences with the settler colonial child welfare system. Relative caregivers shared stories of ongoing colonial violence as they encountered the child welfare system. Identification of ongoing colonization is vital for decolonization and revitalizing Indigenous lifeways, including complex kinship and family structures that remain strong.Proposal text: For too long, settler governments have been forcefully removing Indigenous children from our families and communities for the purpose of colonization (Sinclair, 2004). The over removal of Indigenous children by the child welfare system is akin to the forced removal practices of boarding schools, the Indian Adoption Project and other colonizing projects (Bussey & Lucero, 2013). Despite the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 and various community-based reforms, intended to halt removal, the child welfare system continues to remove Native children at disparate rates. Nationally, Indigenous children have the highest rates of foster care with 14 in care per 1000 compared to 3.8 for whites (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2020).
This study responds to the ongoing removal of Indigenous children, colonial violence in child welfare, the absence of Indigenous voices in the empirical child welfare literature by addressing the following question: How do Indigenous relative caregivers experience the child welfare system?
Methods
I used Indigenous conversational method (Kovach 2010) to understand the experiences of 10 Indigenous relative caregivers with the child welfare system. I use the terms Indigenous relative caregiver and knowledge holder interchangeably to refer to participants to respect them as fully informed, active resistors (Lugones, 2007) and legitimize their Indigenous knowledges. “Indigenous relative caregiver”, from an Indigenous lens, is defined as someone who takes care of children and their community through direct kinship, or advocacy, activism, systems change, or service. Their kinship extends to the community as many Indigenous communities believe that we are all related.
Analysis
I used a mix of Western and Indigenous methods. After data were transcribed verbatim, I used Braun & Clarke’s (2006) six phases for thematic analysis, an inductive approach to identify, analyze, and interpret themes. Next, I applied a customized version of Margaret Kovach’s (2009) condensed conversation, which honors stories in context and the story teller’s voice (Kovach, 2009). I included a mixture of contextualized stories, dialogic conversations, and shorter exemplars (Kovach, 2009).
Findings
While no direct prompts were provided to steer the conversation toward colonialism, knowledge holders consistently shared how the child welfare system perpetuated ongoing colonialism in various ways. Their experiences are reflected through the following themes:
• The child welfare system perpetuates ongoing colonialism by forcefully removing and separating Indigenous children
• The child welfare perpetuates colonialism by imposing the “modern colonial gender system”
• The child welfare system perpetrates colonial violence through negligence, invasion, punishment, and racism
• “The child welfare system is a “colonial stressor” that “triggers historical trauma”
• “We are doing the work of the colonizer”: Tribal child welfare systems perpetuate internalized oppression, or internalized colonization
Conclusion
This study’s findings revealed forms of ongoing colonialism and colonial violence perpetuated by the child welfare system. Knowledge of past and present Indigenous child removal, historical trauma, and social work’s role is foundational in truth-telling (Tuck & Yang, 2012; Haight et al., 2019). Knowledge of these events are also necessary for healing from historical trauma, decolonization, and revitalizing our Indigenous lifeways for our Indigenous futures.