Cultural Safety & Culturally Unsafe

• Cultural Safety: training framework that speaks to sensitivity, diversity, oppression, racism, power relations, privilege, status, and status of those who service. It explores the bicultural relationship between the “colonizer & colonized”.  It is inclusive to spirit, blood memory, respect, interconnectedness, storytelling, feelings, experiences and guidance.  ^[1]
• Culturally Unsafe: practices as “any actions which diminish, demean, or disempower the culturally identity and well being of an individual.”^[2]

Responsibility and Appropriation

• The sole purpose of this training is to give an experience of Anishinaabe traditional knowledge, to assist Nogdawindamin employees to have a crucial understanding of its importance to Anishinaabe identity and healing.
• EXAMPLE   It is not intended to “ordain” anyone to conduct Anishinaabe spiritual practices.  An example, In 2009, a non-indigenous James Arthur Ray, a self-help guru charged 50 people up to $10,000 to attend his 5 day “Spiritual Warrior” retreat in Sedona, Arizona.  Where an “authentic” sweat lodge was the highlight of the week, after a 36 hour fast in the desert.  This experience intention was to push people to their limits, (plastic tarps were used).  Three people died and 18 were hospitalized.

Introduction to Anishinaabe Worldview

Nogdawindamin is an Indigenous Child Welfare agency.  A good place to start is some terminology.

“Indian” Word Web Exercise

Terminology to “Indian” Word Web Exercise

Indian: politically incorrect term, may be derogatory to some people.

Indian relating to India or to the subcontinent comprising India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.  Also, relating to or denoting indigenous peoples of North, Central, and South America, especially those of North America = “North American Indian.”^[4]

Aboriginal: being the first or earliest known of its kind present in region from the earliest time.  Particularly relating to the aborigines in Australia.^[5]Native: being the place or environment in which a person was born “one’s native land” or the “natives of Canada”.^[6]

Indigenous:  Originating in and characteristic of a region or country, being innate and inherent to that land. ^[7]

First Nations: any of the indigenous peoples or Indian communities of Canada, especially one formally recognized by the Canadian government.  ^[8]

Anishinaabe:  in Anishinaabemowin this translates to humans.  The Anishinaabe people refer themselves as this to Identify what Nation they are.

Anishnawbek: is refers to Anishinaabe peoples Nation, Sagamok Anishnawbek.

Stereotypes: In social psychology, a stereotype is an over-generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group’s personality, preferences, or ability.^[9]

Tokenism:  is the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to be inclusive to members of minority groups, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of racial or sexual equality within a workforce. ^[10]

Cultural Competence Continuum

Culturally Competent Continuum UCSD e-Learning

“Colonization” Word Web Exercise

^[11]

Terminology to “Colonization” Word Web Exercise

Colonization:  Colonization refers to both the formal and informal methods (behaviours, ideologies, institutions, policies and economies) that maintain the subjugation or exploitation of Indigenous Peoples, lands, and resources.  Colonizers maintain and/or expand their social, political, and economic power.  Colonization has resulted in the loss of major rights such as land and self-determination, but most of our contemporary daily struggles (poverty, family violence, chemical dependency, suicide, and the deterioration of health) are also direct consequences of colonization. ^[13]

Decolonization: is the intelligent, calculated, and active resistance to the forces of colonialism that perpetuate the subjugation and/or exploitation of our minds, bodies, and lands, and it is engaged for the ultimate purpose of overturning the colonial structure and realizing Indigenous liberation.^[14]

Assimilation: to make someone or something become part of a group, country, society.

Genocide: defined by the 1948 United Nations, intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• Killing members of the group;
• Causing seriously bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. ^[15]

Intent to commit genocide could be inferred both from direct government actions, but also from it’s inaction when faced with the foreseeable implications of its policies. ^[16]

Microaggressions: is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, particularly culturally marginalized groups. ^[17]

The 4P’s

The main themes throughout this training and for frontline social work are:

1. Perception
2. Privilege & Power
3. Purpose

It is critical for consistent reflection of personal worldviews, behaviours, body language, roles and responsibilities in the community.

Perception

Perception is the belief or opinion from a person’s practiced culture and experience that forms that person’s worldview.  What you gather from your 5 senses, and then make sense out of it.  In the Strawberry Outline, it is a symbol of our worldview.

Perception, a Structure of Reality Exercise

Power and Privilege

Power and privilege on the Strawberry outline represents our relationships with ourselves, one another and our environment.

This is defined by:

1. An advantage that only one person or group of people has ^[18].
2. Something nice that you feel lucky to have ^[19].
3. A right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most: the privileges of the very rich.^[20]
4. Things that are taken for granted on a daily basis that a person can be unconscious to the benefits and it turns to an expectation.

Our Power & Privilege Self Reflection

Purpose

Purpose in the Strawberry outline represents being reciprocal and the act of “giving back.”

1. The reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.^[22]
2. An intended or desired result; end; aim; goal. ^[23]
3. Determination; resoluteness. ^[24]
4. The aim that someone wants to achieve, or that something is intended to achieve ^[25]

Our Purpose Self Reflection

Difference in Perspectives

Cyndy Baskin^[26], shares:

We may be different, but there are things that we all have in common.

1. Everyone has a common humanity.
2. There are many ways of knowing and all are significant.
3. Helping inherently carries humanistic goals.
4. Context needs to always be kept in mind.
5. Connecting with service users (clients) and ensuring that our practices are meaningful to them.
6. Self-fulfillment can only be truly realized when there is group/community fulfillment.

The 4R’s

Suzanne Methot listed the 4R’s in her book Legacy^[27], a biographical journey of self discovery.  Methot 4R’s:

1. Respect
2. Responsibility
3. Reciprocity
4. Relationship

Corresponds  and is worth being mentioned to the continuing theme throughout the training and frontline work, and how to move forward with the 4P’s; Perception, Power & Privilege and Purpose.

Respect: being one of the 7 virtues, means that no one is better then another living being (animate and inanimate) and is treated with honour. Respecting and giving value to Indigenous Knowledge, understanding and following individual community protocols.  This includes behaving in a non-judgemental way to build trust.

Responsibility: the opportunity or ability to be accountable and/or behave in an appropriate manner to ensure that choices are made in a “good way” that does not undermine or disrespects or in anyway viewed in culturally unsafe practices.

1. Personal Responsibility, doing work with a good mind means working on personal trauma.
2. As a Group,

Reciprocity: a relationship of give and receive, “everything I do will effect you and everything you do will effect me.”  All knowledge and experiences that individual people bring are honoured and viewed as gifts as lessons.

Relationship: the connection that is made between 2 or more people, that is based on respect, responsibility and reciprocity.  This is to be a focus as the role of a Nogdawindamin Helper.