MSW 517 Module 8 A Globally Aware Social Work Philosophy

Module 8: Mindful Macro Social Work and Pathways to Being a Globally Aware Social Worker

Mindfulness and Community Work

How can a mindful attitude support our efforts in community development and community organizing? First, as discussed in Chapter 9 of Boone (2014), mindfulness practice helps to break down the false dichotomy between self and other. This radical experience transforms us into living examples of non-division, non-exclusion, non-tribalist. By example, through speech and action, we show that it is possible to live unafraid of the "other" because the "other" does not exist. Second, mindfulness allows us to be open-minded: to see more clearly what is before us and catch assumptions as they arise. This is important whether the community we work within is our own, and seems familiar, or is culturally quite alien to us. Meditating allows us to work with our mental filters and how they crop up when we feel threatened. Third, being mindful keeps us open-hearted: we can let in the suffering of others knowing it is no different in its essence from our own suffering. We can stay the course rather than becoming overwhelmed and seeking refuge in more comfortable roles. Fourth, practicing mindfulness helps us reconnect with our bodies and our environments. If we become too conceptual, we begin to devalue the body and nature. We can't be strong advocates for social justice if we don't see and feel what is happening to our planet and to the bodies that live on it.

How do these attitudinal shifts manifest in daily life as we work with communities? Let's take the formation of a task group to take on the lack of effective community re-entry programs for former prisoners. As we hold our first meeting with the formerly incarcerated and their families, neighbors, non-profits, church deacons, and representatives from local government together, we are aware of tensions. Each stakeholder views the others as potential threats to their well-being, but there are also bonds of mutual care. We bring equanimity to the meeting and speak from a position of empathy for everyone concerned. We acknowledge the pain that is deeply rooted in a community ravaged by federal policies that have instituted mass incarceration of black and brown people, what Michelle Alexander (2010) calls "the new Jim Crow." We ask that everyone at the table take a moment of silence to abide with this suffering and generate good will toward the young men, their families, and the whole community. We elicit both the fears and the hopes of each person present while the others are encouraged to listen with their hearts. Only then do we begin the work of exploring potential solutions, weighing their risks and benefits, and asking that those most closely affected testify to whether these solutions are ecologically valid. We watch as hope, frustration, fear, and love contend with each other for space, and we create mindful pauses in the discussion by reflecting how these arise. If a framework of blame is present, we notice this out loud and ask, "How can we move beyond blame and toward mutual responsibility? What is each of us willing to do?" Roles are defined for the task group going forward, ways of maintaining communication, ways of measuring our progress - all in a spirit of seeing the boundaries between us/them, you/me as illusory. We acknowledge how steep the mountain is that we must climb, and we support everyone present to take the long view.

What about community organizing? Is community development enough when the reasons for the community's problems are embedded in institutionalized racism at a national level? Using the same example, in a shift from community development to community organizing, we ask the stakeholders to name the policies that must change and the resources that must be freed up and brought into the community. We identify the members of Congress, the state government bureaus, the staff in the mayor's office, and the business owners and managers who need to be contacted. We discuss strategy: how can we carry this cooperative sense of interconnectedness that is developing within the task group and use it to speak truth to power? How can we appeal to the better natures of people who may be blinded by old paradigms or the desire to maintain power? How can we calmly but powerfully show the people in power that they have choices to make, and these choices lead either to unity with their own civic values or division within themselves? As people who are working being whole, on not allowing the pressures of divisiveness to defeat them, community members can carry the dignity of their larger vision of the human community into their interactions with people who have power but have lost connectedness, who have become caught up in narratives of factionalism.

The argument of engaged Buddhism or mindful macro practice is that it is only when we work from the inside out, when we see our own internal dividedness, when we see all life as interconnected including victims and perpetrators, that we can heal the divisions that threaten to destroy us. If we play our parts in the script and succumb to hatred and fear, we have already lost no matter how passionate we are. Gandhian ahimsa, non-violent protest, is powerful precisely because it exposes oppressors and the oppressed to their own and each other's humanity. One may argue that to be mindful is to be non-violent, because we can't harm someone else when we recognize our common nature as embodied consciousness itself.

In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. supported a radical move advocated by Southern Christian Leadership Conference organizer James Bevel: for black children to lead a non-violent march (Carson et al., 1991). Hundreds of children were trained in non-violent protest methods and principles. They continued for several days despite mass arrests. Images on national television of children set upon by police dogs, batons, and fire hoses galvanized the national conscience enough to force President Kennedy to intervene, ultimately leading to the Birmingham Truce Agreement, which desegregated lunch counters and public facilities and created a jobs program for African Americans. There was great controversy at the time within the community over this tactic of putting children at risk. How do you feel? Do children have the right to put themselves in danger for social justice? At what age? This example challenges us to think about how we engage as social workers here and abroad. If we are grounded in transcendent spirituality, whether mindfulness-based or faith-based, then we may be willing to risk ourselves. But in collective action, we also have to ask what cost we are asking others to make, and who gets to decide.

Mindfulness and Organizational Work

At the level of organizations, social workers can play multiple roles. They can empower coalitions to push for policy changes from outside of organizations, or they can work from within - as policy writers and implementers, as leaders and middle managers of non-profits, as creators of new organizations, and as researchers bringing evidence to policy. A mindful approach fosters effective engagement in any of these roles. Organizational cultures are microcosms of society and are vulnerable to the same hierarchies, subgroupings, and personality clashes that families experience. Being a mindful social worker in these settings creates opportunities for gradual, subtle culture change. When we embody equanimity and loving kindness, we set an example and show another way of dealing with conflict.

At the same time, when we are less attached to "self" as a separate being that must be defended, we become more fluid. Skillful means is an important construct in Buddhism that links enlightened attitudes with action. Sometimes to be skillful means to be fierce. A mental health provider worked on a health care team and noticed that opinions about a certain patient were hardening. Team members saw him as unwilling to follow recommendations and disrespectful. Some team members recommended discharging him from the program, even though his behavior was not that different from that of some other patients who were accepted. He seemed to be triggering personal reactions. Staff interactions with him were becoming increasingly directive and argumentative as he resisted cooperation, only fanning the flames.

The mental health provider saw his behavior as rooted in distrust that stemmed from a history of child abuse. During group discussions, his nurse continuously cut off the mental health provider before he could fully express my views and potential solutions. He was mindful of his growing anger at neither he nor the patient being heard, and made a conscious decision to intervene sharply, as his calm, friendly approach was not working. He stopped the nurse in mid-sentence, yelling, "Let me speak!" A tense silence ensued as he tried to calm himself and organize his thoughts. At last, he was able to share his view that the patient was acting from fear, and that he deserved a different approach. The team came together and determined that his nurse could not be objective and should withdraw; another nurse with mental health experience was brought in. The team developed a behavioral contract that specified both the patient's and the team's responsibilities and this was delivered to the patient by the mental health provider, who helped him be mindful of how his reactions were based partly in the past.

Weeks later, the nurse who kept interrupting the mental health provider confided that her husband had a serious illness and was unable to work, so she was picking up extra shifts and felt overwhelmed. They never talked about the conflict between them, but she knew from his lack of rancor that he would be supportive. Although his role on the team was not macro practice, he could have an influence on institutional culture by consistently conveying the message: we are all human, we all struggle, and we have a right to be heard.

What does mindful leadership look like? As the previous example suggests, we do not have to have formal positions of leadership to be leaders. Our sphere of influence is as big as our ability to be mindfully present. But when we do hold authority, we can use mindfulness practice to stay humble and open to others' ideas (Sethi, 2009). We can question our own assumptions about the right ways of doing things and foster an environment in which all people are valued, and conflicts and failures are perceived as learning opportunities. We can also carve out space and time for actual mindfulness practice during the workday and encourage staff to participate. Spontaneous comments afterward often reveal the benefits of stopping the world for a short time: higher productivity, reduced work stress, new insights into work and home challenges, and inner peace.

How do we become responsible stewards of the environment in macro social work? Boone (2014) eloquently describes the fundamental ethical shift that occurs when we see ourselves as not only in the environment, but inseparable from it. But how can this manifest in practice?

1. We are mindful of how we use resources in our daily lives. We treat the water we drink and clean with, the earth into which we cast our refuse, the air we breathe, the climate that surrounds us, as ourselves. We know we are temporary forms created from and returning to the Earth, and that we interchange with our environment constantly, to the point that the line between "I" and "the world" is permeable.

2. We look for opportunities to make our organizations more environmentally responsible. We wonder about how few people commute together or take public transportation or ride their bikes to work and explore collective solutions. We question how our pension funds and 401Ks are allocated, and support divesting from fossil fuel companies. We volunteer to sit on committees for sustainable energy sourcing. Just as important as our actions are our motivations. If we take action out of fear, this fear sews seeds of resistance and conflict. But if we view the Earth as our mother (which is not a metaphor, but a fact) then we naturally wish to protect her. If we stay mindful of the connections among the organization, society, and the natural world, then we can't help but be good stewards.

3. We commit to environmental justice as a critical lens through which we view psychosocial problems, and as an arena in which we act. By including the natural and built environments in our assessments, we rare practicing being mindful of the whole picture - not dividing it up. AS Boone points out in this week's readings, the Person-In-Environment perspective that is so central to social work theory and practice has overwhelmingly emphasized the social environment over the physical environment. We are experts in exploring the cause-and-effect relationships among social entities such as families, schools, and child welfare agencies. But what about streets, parks, landfills, airports, coastal wetlands, and pig farms? We need to learn the vocabulary and have enough understanding of environmental science and economics to ask the right questions of the right people. By being mindfully aware of the interdependence of all things, you can avoid wearing environmental blinders.

Diversity and Mindfulness in Macro Social Work

The Buddhist origins of mindfulness practice speak to the universality of human suffering and liberation from suffering. How then do we include cultural awareness, humility, and competence in our mindful approach to macro-level issues? Through mindfulness meditation we become more capable of noticing thoughts as they arise and treating these thoughts with a grain of salt. This includes judgments we make about ourselves and others. By letting go of judgments and returning to present experience, we can become more curious about how communities and organizations function in real life. When visiting a collectivist society, we may miss the signs of extended family networks acting as buffers against poverty. We may feel sorry for multigenerational families living in crowded conditions and not see the many mutual transactions that allow children to be cared for, the sick to pay for treatment, the elderly to live at home. By knowing how little we know we can be open to discovering how things work and where and whether we can fit into that ecosystem helpfully. The field of charity work is littered with failures from well-intentioned programs, like stoves that emit less smoke but require twice as much work. In other words, we need that beginner mind.

In 2019, the Kayenta coal mine closed as the lower price of natural gas made it unsustainable. Ironically, the mine that was a source of greenhouse gases also served the Hopi tribe with revenues from coal sales, jobs, and as a heating source in the winter. Today the Hopi tribe faces a crisis ( https://www.knau.org/post/coal-mine-s-closure-leaves-hopi-navajo-homes-without-heat-winter (Links to an external site.) ). Families are choosing between heating and food, and nonprofits are trying to step in to fill the gap with firewood deliveries after temperatures have already dropped. Some blame the Hopi tribal government for being ill-prepared, but the mining company itself also failed to anticipate these consequences. As usual, disenfranchised people were ignored in the global economy.

Principles of Macro Social Work

Community development, Capacity building, Social Inclusion Env. Sustainability, Grassroots Organizing, Cultural Competence….

 

As a macro social worker, how would you incorporate organizing and cultural competence into Red Feather's work if you were on the staff? What questions would you have to ask first before you could act? What reactions come up for you as you read about this failure of policy? How would you practice mindfulness of your thoughts and feelings if you were lobbying the entities responsible for the lack of transitional planning? Imagine standing on the land in northern Arizona. How might your experience of being connected to the environment inform your approach?

Revisiting Global Social Work

If we are to engage in macro social work on the global stage, whether in oppressed communities within our borders or beyond them, then we need guiding principles specific to a transnational focus. Leahy (2001) unpacks six key concepts. See if you can match the quotations with their components.

A holistic comprehension of macro global social work must account for the radically dislocating effects of globalization, both the benefits - shared knowledge, technology, coordination of international programs, and cultural contact - and the dangers: global economic forces that do not support the transitions of displaced people who are already socially excluded; global terror and the spread of hate-based ideologies; and the threats to natural environments posed by overpopulation and climate change. As we come to better appreciate the importance of social capital and social well-being, our definitions of human rights, security and sustainability must be updated. Cultural diversity and civil society themselves are threatened, as norms are eroded by authoritarianism, nationalism, and global capital. What can we do? Our part. We can start by becoming informed global citizens.

Who Will You Become?

Think back to the many applications of generalist social work practice we have adapted to new populations. We have seen how interpersonal therapy for depression and trauma-informed therapy can be used by paraprofessionals in refugee settings. We have described the challenges and possibilities of collaboration between Western mental health and aboriginal healers. We have studied the use of Medicine Wheels with Native American children in foster care, and mindfulness-based art programs with children at risk. We have explored how Hawaiian conflict resolution practices can be used with groups and families in substance abuse treatment, how African spirituality can infuse individual psychotherapy, and how depressed East Asian women can be empowered through attention to body, mind and spirit without sacrificing their need to maintain relationships. We have seen how loving kindness meditation can improve PTSD symptoms on a group level, and how it can help family members cope with each other's suffering. We have seen the power of mindfulness and acceptance when integrated into group work. Throughout this exploration, we have also placed you as an evolving person and professional at the center. Unless you are mindful of how you are responding internally to the challenges of your profession, and unless you place your own growth as a high priority and lifelong endeavor, you will not fulfill your potential and you may cause unintended harm. Put another way, caring about yourself and caring about the people you serve go hand in hand.

You probably knew before you entered this program that being a social worker is more than a career - it's a calling. Many needs clamor for our attention, and we hope this course has sensitized you to the global scope of that need, as well the global breadth of culturally diverse ways of meeting those needs. Now, we invite you to reflect on what aspects of the course have called you the most powerfully. Is it the idea of working internationally rather than helplessly watching news of traumatic experiences unfold in places where people already struggle to survive? Is it bringing ancient spiritual traditions to bear on modern problems of mental health and social adjustment? Is it integrating mindfulness into your daily life and social work practice? It is going beyond micro-level practice to shape policy and progress on a broader level? No matter the answer, what all of these directions have in common is that they are guaranteed to lead you out of your comfort zone. To meet others where they are is to be confronted with where we are. As Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön (1991, pg. 32) says,

"Life's work is to wake us up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It's going to stick around until you learn your lesson, at any rate. You can leave your marriage, you can quit your job, you can only go where people are going to praise you, you can manipulate your world until you're blue I the face to try to make it always smooth, but the same old demons will always come up until finally you have learned your lesson, the lesson they came to teach you. Then those same demons will appear as friendly, warmhearted companions on the path."

Summary

In our 8th week we have returned to the macro level of communities and organizations to see how mindfulness and global sensibilities can help us be effective agents of change. We have examined the ramifications of dissolving the distinction between self and other: greater empathy and commitment, deeper cultural humility, more ability to live as examples of mindfulness when we help to develop and organize at the community level and when we lead from within organizations. We have connected mindfulness with Gandhian non-violence and with environmental justice. We have analyzed the ways that a global approach to social work transforms concepts of human civil rights, security, and sustainability. And lastly, we have brought together the strands of the course and discovered that they make a beautiful fabric on which we can sit together, and a strong rope for climbing to new heights.

References

Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press.

Carson, C., Garrow, D. J., Gill, G., Harding, V. & Clark Hine, D. (Eds.) (1991). The eyes on the prize civil rights reader: Documents, speeches, and firsthand accounts from the black freedom struggle. Penguin Books.

Chödrön, P. (1991). The wisdom of no escape and the path of loving-kindness. Shambhala.

Sethi, Deepak. (2009). Mindful leadership. Leader to Leader, 51, 7-11.

Module 5: Indigenous Methods of Healing Psychosocial Problems: Individuals and Families

Understanding an Indigenous Worldview

A core idea for this week is that Western culture has not only harmed indigenous cultures through colonial subjugation, but that Western culture is in itself pathological, diseased. By understanding the ways that modernism, consumerism, and individualism are damaging to the body, mind and spirit, we can begin to shift toward a more holistic version of ourselves as social workers and human beings.

We are not rejecting modernity itself. After all, we live in an age of advanced technology that has led to improvements in many facets of human quality of life. What we are bringing into question is the failure of modernity to embrace and incorporate the wisdom of indigenous life. By considering first peoples primitive or uncivilized, we have disconnected ourselves from a vibrant, balanced life in connection with nature and community.

We have chosen the word "philosophy" over others, such as "theory" or "treatment model" because the latter terms lack the comprehensive nature that a philosophy has. We consider a philosophy to have five interrelated aspects:

1. A definition of happiness and the good life

2. An understanding of reality, of creation and its purpose

3. An understanding of the place of community and the individual in that reality

4. An understanding of the proper place of the individual in the community

5. A set of practices for restoring happiness when it has been disturbed

None of these elements can be comprehended separately. Happiness and the good life can only be understood in the context of the nature of reality the purpose of creation, our roles within the community, and the place of the community within the cosmos. Practices to restore happiness only make sense if we know how happiness and the good life relate back to the context of our lives.

Perhaps most fundamental to indigenous philosophies is the very idea, pointing to our lived experience, that we do live within communities and within a cosmos. It would have never occurred to people growing up in a preindustrial culture to see themselves as separate from these larger circles. Much of the anxiety and depression we feel today can be traced to existential conditions that in Western society seem inevitable, fundamental: mortality, isolation, meaninglessness, and freedom (Yalom, 1980). Yet there is a countering narrative for each of these "givens" in indigenous cultures. Mortality is moderated by identification with a spiritual essence that constitutes all of the cosmos. Isolation, which in existentialism means the inability to ever truly know another person or become one with them, is belied by the possibilities of deep knowing that come with communion with others and the secure attachments that characterize a collective society. Meaninglessness, which in existentialism signifies the lack of any absolute, determined meaning to life, would be complete nonsense to an indigenous person. Meaning is found, instead, in every aspect of life, and is to be discovered through ancestral wisdom and listening to the messages of the cosmos that come through dreams and other means. Freedom, which in existentialism is understood as the terrible burden of choice in an uncertain world, also holds no special terror in indigenous cultures, because choices arise naturally from confluence of one's inner connection with spiritual reality and one's cultural sensibilities.

This description may seem idealistic, but that is because all or almost all indigenous societies today have made contact with Western civilization and have been infected with existential angst on both individual and communal levels. Today, individuals from colonized societies do live and die outside of the cosmology that made sense of everything. Thus they do suffer from isolation, meaninglessness, and the burden of choice. With many choices taken away by the restrictions imposed by the larger society, freedom is distorted into self-destruction. And so mortality no longer means the natural transition from life to the world beyond. It often happens as the result of the inability to live a good life.

Our task, then, is to rediscover the practices for restoring happiness that were originally used to deal with the traumas that come with life itself: internal disharmony, premature death, illness, and conflict. Yet we can't appropriate these methods wholesale. First, we must root them in their original cosmology, rather than ripping them from their context and just following the technical steps. Marshall (2011) shows how this can yield mixed results when colonized people who themselves have not restored their relationship with spirit try to help others. Next, we must integrate the principles and methods into Western models to some degree. Why? Because we neither wish to be inauthentic in ourselves or force the people we work with to adopt practices that may feel alien to them, depending on their degree of acculturation to Western society. The exception that proves the rule is when we are working with communities that remain highly traditional - in this case we would partner with healers who are already culturally aligned.

Use of Self with Colonized People

One implication of the importance of grounding indigenous methods in indigenous philosophies is that we have responsibility to work on our own spirituality. We define this imperative broadly, not as a demand that all social workers partake in a faith tradition, but as a recognition that the state of our own being affects our ability to help others. Knowledge, skills, values, ethics, self-awareness, self-regulation - these are actually not enough to be truly effective as social workers working with colonized populations. We also need something we might call spiritual presence.

What is spiritual presence and how can we cultivate it? One precept common to indigenous philosophies is that when we are in a natural state, we are already spiritually present. Unnatural states would be the result of disturbance of the balance in our lives or contamination from a toxic environment, relationship, or event. We return to a natural state through purification and rebalancing.

Spiritual presence is of course a relative term. It is not all or nothing - of it were, we would all give up before we started. Our lives, as Western humans subject to existential angst, are ideally journeys toward spiritual presence. This does not need to be approached through an indigenous philosophy. It is the underlying value in interconnectedness that unites all paths toward spiritual presence.

What distinguishes this journey from those that are focused on individual happiness is the importance of being present to the beings in our lives. For example, going to yoga and meditating, if undertaken with the limited goal of reducing stress, getting "me" time, or being healthier, may not carry us any closer to the source - to a relationship with the energies of life itself. On the other hand, aspiring to "being a spiritual person" by trying to act on higher morals without engaging in the hard work of purification and rebalancing will result in a divided state between one's actions and one's internal state. We can sense people who act good but feel bad.

By acknowledging that we are in mid-journey toward spiritual presence, we can genuinely embody the humility needed to gain trust over time within colonized communities. By laughing at our own Western hang-ups we can acknowledge the fact that we are outsiders who have some critical distance from our own modern malaise. And we can go deeper when the moment comes by sharing our deeper intention to be a force for decolonization despite our unworthiness.

Child and Family Work with Oppressed People

The first question we must answer when considering social work with families, especially beyond the White middle-class model of the nuclear family, is how we are defining family: who belongs in it, and what roles each member has. We must also acknowledge that colonized communities, including those within our own borders such as African Americans and Native Americans (including those immigrated from Central America), have families that have been broken in many ways. From one point of view, the foster care system is, at least in its stated mission, a way to protect child welfare and reunite families when possible. However, from another point of view foster care is the symptom of White oppression of families of color, because so many of the problems that result in out-of-home placement can be traced back to intergenerational trauma.

Efforts to align foster care programs and children at risk with indigenous values do exist. Gilgun (2002) uses the Medicine Wheel to draw from the wisdom of the four directions and integrates this wisdom with Western theories of child development. By drawing from child socialization practices common across Native American tribes, Gilgun demonstrates a model for building resilience in the form of four traditional values: Belonging, Mastery, Independence, and Generosity. Adults are primarily responsible for ensuring that children at risk of any background learn how to embody these values. For example, Mastery is encouraged through the following adult behaviors: give youth time and attention to show youth how to do new things; do at least one thing well themselves; give young person recognition when youth does something well; counsel young person about the value of appropriate expression of emotions; demonstrate appropriate expression of emotions; and recognize when young person demonstrates appropriate expression of emotion" (pg. 78).

Let's compare the above approach, which offers values and practices to be adopted by people working in the existing child welfare system, with a program designed from the ground up based on indigenous principles. The Progressive Life Center's Therapeutic Foster Care program (Gregory & Phillips, 1997) was founded in 1083 on NTU psychotherapy values and methods. The target population was children and youth with severe mental health and/or behavior problems who were placed in foster care. Its outcomes speak to its innovative yet deeply traditional Afrocentric model: a high success rate in placements that do not end prematurely, large reductions in the use of psychiatric medications, and improvements in emotional well-being, academic performance, and school stability.

The authors attribute the program's success to its NTU philosophy. This is manifested in training for the foster parents in the spiritual principles of NTU, particularly the Nguzo Saba, which helps the parents to support foster children in practicing these values. Rituals of transition and healing for children and families create pride in culture, connection to ancestors, and body-mind revitalization. Another factor that may important to successful outcomes is the comprehensive nature of services, with respite, crisis intervention, individual and family therapy, parent training, and multifamily retreats.

A third model of Western-indigenous integration is the application of the Hawaiian family conflict resolution practice of Ho'oponopono to situations that arise in school (Nishihara, 1978). Although this adaptation is practiced with groups of students, and might better fit in the previous module, it is so clearly grounded in the dynamics of extended families that we decided to include it here, as a more widely applicable concept that could be used in family social work. Nishihara thoughtfully explores the potential issues in translating the practice to a modern context. One potential challenge is to build trust with the participants as an outsider, since an elder within the extended family was the leader in traditional Ho'oponopono. By translating the stages of the practice into their modern equivalents, Nishihara bolsters the integrity of the process, which itself promotes trust, openness, and resolution.

Two concepts from Ho'oponopono bear some unpacking here: hala and hihia. As Nishihara describes, hala is the original wrong committed, and acts as a bind connecting transgressor and victim. Hihia is the entanglement that results from the hala as reactions accumulate within the family system. Only when the need for family harmony exceeds the discomfort of confrontation, and only when the members are willing to be honest, can Ho'oponopono succeed.

An example may be helpful. Let's say that a mother neglects a daughter due to being depressed, and the child gets injured as a result. The father is scared and angry and lashes out at the mother, who then takes the child and goes to live with her parents. The father, feeling punished and helpless, drinks and gets fired from work. The mother is even more depressed because she feels guilty for starting the chain of events. She still neglects her daughter, who is parented by her grandparents but begins to act out in school because she wants her father back.

Prior to colonization by Europeans, the Hawaiian family could trace the harm back to the mother's depression, everyone could acknowledge their part in the web of cause and effect, and a solution could be determined - perhaps the mother could agree to pay more attention to her daughter and reunite with the father, the father could agree to handle his anger more responsibly, the daughter could return to her previous good behavior, and the grandparents could be more supportive of the mother to help her with her depression. Today, it seems important to place the family's problems in a larger context. Perhaps the mother is depressed in part because she has poorly controlled diabetes from a Western diet and a need to overeat to suppress her frustration over her husband's temper, which in turn is fueled by the racist treatment of his boss.

How can we reach a real resolution with these uncontrollable sociopolitical factors? This is where a marriage of the micro level intervention within the family and the mezzo level of its interaction with larger systems may be necessary. The social worker may explore how effective human resources or a worker union may be in advocating for the father, or helping the mother or even the extended family to connect with nonprofits supporting nutrition based on traditional foods.

Anti-Oppressive Practice with the Individual-in-Family

Given the central place of the family in colonized communities, it doesn't make much sense to think of the individual in isolation, even when we are focusing on individual interventions. Family work can also be done while focusing on the individual, and without a spiritual system, when we are working outside the context of a program. In the last module, we discussed Freire's (1968) model of liberating dialogue. For example, let's say that a Guatemalan Mayan woman has fled her country with her children and has sought asylum. She can't understand why she is being treated like a criminal by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. You, the social worker for a refugee resettlement non-profit, are assigned to find out if the mother has relatives with whom her children can stay while she awaits a hearing. Steeped in the pedagogy of the oppressed, you begin a conversation with the mother about the conditions she has fled and ask how she made the difficult decision to cross Mexico and enter the United States.

You learn that she has bought into the mythologized version of the United States as a land of opportunity and safety, and use your observations of her lived experience so far with the asylum process, as well as your own knowledge of how policy is being implemented, to help her have a realistic vision of what to expect, and of the pervasive nature of oppression. However, you also describe paths forward and the importance of re-establishing a sense of community, perhaps through the strong Guatemalan community in Los Angeles. You ask about her culture and its strengths, suggesting that through her grounding in her syncretism of Mayan belief and Catholicism, she may hold onto a sense of cultural identity that will help her stay strong for herself and her children.

All the while, as you embody being both student and teacher and as you help this mother gain critical distance, you treat her as the subject of her story that she is, rather than an object. How can she use her past experiences, her values, and her individual strengths to go forward? You also treat her children as subjects, learning their names and ages and asking them about how they have been helpful on the journey, what they hope to learn in school, and what strengths they will use to face an uncertain future.

Finally, we turn to NTU Psychotherapy as an example of a deeply thought out expression of indigenous philosophy in the modern context of the therapeutic relationship. Whether we ascribe specifically to an Afrocentric value system or not, what can we learn from this approach? The case example from Phillips (1990) could be recast as a good example of an effective combination of humanistic, cognitive-behavioral, and systemic therapy. One could rename the principles and stages of the therapy process with more Eurocentric terminology. But in this reductive process, something central would be lost: the ineffable, intangible quality of communion, of energetic alignment. It's not that communion between client and social worker, client and the spiritual, and social worker and the spiritual are exclusively products of African worldviews. It's that NTU psychotherapy makes central and explicit the role of this communion/alignment as ground, path and fruition of the work. There is the sense that the waters run deep and wide and, if the social worker lets them, they will carry both themselves and the client to a new place where more authentic being is possible.

Summary

It can be challenging to evaluate integrated programs to determine what makes them successful, given that any dismantling to identify the active ingredients would violate the whole. One commonality among the Ho'oponopono, NTU and Circle of Courage approaches is that rely on a comprehensive, culturally rooted vision of what it means to live a good, whole life. Perhaps one of the broader lessons from our exploration of indigenous healing traditions is that they are prescriptive: they offer guidance and wisdom. Western psychotherapeutic theories and social work theories may be strengths-based, but they either shy away from specific value systems or couch them in generic humanistic principles. By offering specific language and relating concepts of the good life into a clearly organized framework, indigenous healing creates an effective set of catalyzers: a philosophical system to guide decisions; a set of practices that connect one to the spiritual realm and to human relationships; and a communal identity that defeats isolation and oppression.

References

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Harvard University Press.

Gregory, S. D., & Phillips, F. B. (1997). "Of Mind, Body, and Spirit": Therapeutic foster care—An innovative approach to healing from an NTU perspective. Child Welfare 76(1), 127-142.

Yalom, I. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. Basic Books.