Indigenous parents and child welfare: Mistrust, epistemic injustice, and training

Abstract

The settler state's taking of Indigenous children into care disrupts their communities and continues destructive, assimilationist policies. This article presents the perceptions of lawyers, social workers and judges of how Indigenous parents experience child welfare in Quebec. Our participants characterized those experiences negatively. Barriers of language and culture as well as mistrust impede meaningful participation. Parents experience epistemic injustice, wronged in their capacity as knowers. Mistrust also hampers efforts to include Indigenous workers in the system. Emphasizing state workers’ ignorance of Indigenous family practices and the harms of settler colonialism, participants called for greater training. But critical literature on professional education signals the limits of such training to change institutions. Our findings reinforce the jurisdictional calls away from improving the system towards empowering Indigenous peoples to run services of child welfare. The patterns detected and theoretical resources used are relevant to researchers of other institutions that interact with vulnerable populations.

The representation of indigenous children in policies in Indonesia

“…Placing indigenous children in care and removing them from their families sometimes only puts them at more risk (Blackstock et al, 2007;Coy, 2009). Moreover, indigenous parents also experience "epistemic justice," making them mistrust the child welfare system (Leckey et al, 2022;Robertson et al, 2022).…”

A collaborative approach to develop indigenous specific parenting education

“…Further, Indigenous peoples' experiences in the broader social context is that the services they have been provided are substandard, leading them to be reluctant to access future services (Nelson & Wilson, 2018). In many existing services there is a lack of awareness and understanding of Indigenous family practices, in addition to few Indigenous employees, even in government services that focus on family law matters (Leckey et al, 2021). Race, social class and gender are all factors that hinder the ability to meaningfully engage in court processes or alternative dispute resolution services, as does a lack of knowledge about legal rights and entitlements and the need to negotiate a formal forms‐based process (Ojelabi & Noone, 2020; Cunneen et al, 2014).…”

Ka mua, ka muri—Walking backwards into the future

“…As close-to-the-ground providers offering holistic, relationally oriented, culturally responsive services, Māta Waka complement those services also provided by Iwi and other NGOs. In particular they are important facilitators of access to Kaupapa Māori services for whānau Māori who do not whakapapa to mana whenua but may be deeply reluctant to engage with mainstream organisations because of personal and inter-generational histories of traumatic and punitive interactions with colonial systems (Leckey et al, 2022;Lindsay Latimer et al, 2020). Equitable, mutually productive partnerships between statutory agencies and Māta Waka are thus essential to ensuring that the priorities, aspirations and needs of these whānau are met.…”