The School of Social Work at McMaster University is committed to improving our capacity to incorporate indigenous approaches to social work. In 2014 we began a process of gathering interested faculty (both full-time and sessional) to discuss how we might build capacity and reconciliation among instructors in the McMaster School of Social Work for teaching and learning about Indigenous-Settler relations; and to enhance instructors’ abilities to appropriately integrate Indigenous practices of healing, helping, community building and activism into the curriculum. As with so many such initiatives, the stated intentions are one thing... the actualities are another, more provocative and more complicated.
In this presentation we reflect on our learning during our involvement in the process of planning monthly gatherings for seventeen (full and part time) social work instructors. We will talk about our dual paths as an indigenous person and a settler as we have tried to navigate the complications of an historical relationship that continues to impact our capacities to teach and learn. The emphasis in this presentation will not be on objectives and destinations but rather the relational work that must be done in order to even realistically begin to think about how we can incorporate indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being.