Michael Yellow Bird

In a world gripped by intersecting crises and deepening inequalities, can social work break free from its colonial entanglements to imagine a more just and compassionate future? Decolonising Social Work Education: Memory, Haunting and Critical Hope in the Nordics confronts the enduring legacies of colonialism that continue to shape the foundations of social work education. Through the lenses of haunting, memory, and critical hope, it challenges the discipline’s historical complicity with systems of domination and calls for a radical reimagining of its pedagogical core. Grounded in pluriversal knowledges and informed by decolonial thought, this book advocates for a transformative, relational curriculum—one that resists neoliberalism, carceral logics, and epistemic injustice. Drawing on examples from the Nordic context, it offers a bold vision for social work rooted in justice, equity, and ecological interconnectedness. With humility, reflection, and collective imagination, it charts a path towards a liberatory future where social work becomes a force for healing and transformation.

Taking a new and innovative angle on social work, this book seeks to remedy the lack of holistic perspectives currently used in Western social work practice by exploring Indigenous and other culturally diverse understandings and experiences of healing. This book examines six core areas of healing through a holistic lens that is grounded in a decolonizing perspective. Situating integrative healing within social work education and theory, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from social memory and historical trauma, contemplative traditions, storytelling, healing literatures, integrative health, and the traditional environmental knowledge of Indigenous Peoples. In exploring issues of water, creative expression, movement, contemplation, animals, and the natural world in relation to social work practice, the book will appeal to all scholars, practitioners, and community members interested in decolonization and Indigenous studies.

This book presents the Transformational Indigenous Praxis Model (TIPM), an innovative framework for promoting critical consciousness toward decolonization efforts among educators. The TIPM challenges readers to examine how even the most well intended educators are complicit in reproducing ethnic stereotypes, racist actions, deficit-based ideology, and recolonization. Drawing from decades of collaboration with teachers and school leaders serving Indigenous children and communities, this volume will help educators better support the development of their students' critical thinking skills. Representing a holistic balance, the text is organized in four sections: Birth–Grade 12 and Community Education, Teacher Education, Higher Education, and Educational Leadership. Unsettling Settler-Colonial Education centers the needs of teachers, children, families, and communities that are currently engaged in public education and who deserve an improved experience today, while also committing to more positive Indigenous futurities. Book Features:Introduces the TIPM as a structure that supports educators in decolonizing and indigenizing their practices. Provides examples of how pathway-making across a variety of settings takes shape on the TIPM continuum. Highlights a diverse group of authors who are making major contributions to the transformation agendas of Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing. Includes a brief summary of the TIPM dimensions with examples of the challenges that educators face as they expand their critical consciousness toward decolonization. Follows Native oral traditions by sharing lessons, research, and personal lived experience. Identifies the deficit ideological underpinnings that frame Indigenous students' school experiences. Employs a metaphor of wave jumping to illustrate how educators working to decolonize their practice can gain forward momentum with time and energy even while facing resistance. Provides a methodology to promote healing and cultural restoration of Indigenous peoples.

This book presents the Transformational Indigenous Praxis Model (TIPM), an innovative framework for promoting critical consciousness toward decolonization efforts among educators. The TIPM challenges readers to examine how even the most well intended educators are complicit in reproducing ethnic stereotypes, racist actions, deficit-based ideology, and recolonization. Drawing from decades of collaboration with teachers and school leaders serving Indigenous children and communities, this volume will help educators better support the development of their students' critical thinking skills. Representing a holistic balance, the text is organized in four sections: Birth–Grade 12 and Community Education, Teacher Education, Higher Education, and Educational Leadership. Unsettling Settler-Colonial Education centers the needs of teachers, children, families, and communities that are currently engaged in public education and who deserve an improved experience today, while also committing to more positive Indigenous futurities. Book Features:Introduces the TIPM as a structure that supports educators in decolonizing and indigenizing their practices. Provides examples of how pathway-making across a variety of settings takes shape on the TIPM continuum. Highlights a diverse group of authors who are making major contributions to the transformation agendas of Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing. Includes a brief summary of the TIPM dimensions with examples of the challenges that educators face as they expand their critical consciousness toward decolonization. Follows Native oral traditions by sharing lessons, research, and personal lived experience. Identifies the deficit ideological underpinnings that frame Indigenous students' school experiences. Employs a metaphor of wave jumping to illustrate how educators working to decolonize their practice can gain forward momentum with time and energy even while facing resistance. Provides a methodology to promote healing and cultural restoration of Indigenous peoples.

Taking a new and innovative angle on social work, this book seeks to remedy the lack of holistic perspectives currently used in Western social work practice by exploring Indigenous and other culturally diverse understandings and experiences of healing. This book examines six core areas of healing through a holistic lens that is grounded in a decolonizing perspective. Situating integrative healing within social work education and theory, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from social memory and historical trauma, contemplative traditions, storytelling, healing literatures, integrative health, and the traditional environmental knowledge of Indigenous Peoples. In exploring issues of water, creative expression, movement, contemplation, animals, and the natural world in relation to social work practice, the book will appeal to all scholars, practitioners, and community members interested in decolonization and Indigenous studies.