Keynote Session – 60 minutes
OVERVIEW
As social work moves toward reckoning with white supremacy, one vital piece of the discussion is often missing from the conversation: settler colonialism. Social workers perpetuate coloniality and remain complicit in systemic harms due to Eurocentric social work education and practice models. Decolonization, the undoing of colonialism whereby a nation reestablishes itself, is an ideal movement, framework, and ultimately praxis that social work can apply. Decolonizing social work can interrupt these haphazard harms and move towards a profession that actualizes its commitment to social justice.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
As a result of attending this presentation, participants will:
- Learn about settler colonialism and its impact on the social work profession;
- Understand manifestations of coloniality and subsequent complicity in harmful systems; and
- Be introduced to decolonization as a movement, framework, and praxis for social work.
PRESENTER
Dr. Autumn Asher BlackDeer is a queer anti-colonial scholar-activist from the Southern Cheyenne Nation and serves as an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver. Her scholarship illuminates the impact of structural violence on American Indian and Alaska Native communities. Dr. BlackDeer centers Indigenous voices throughout her research by using quantitative approaches and big data as tools for responsible storytelling. Dr. BlackDeer is a racial equity scholar with an emphasis on Indigenous tribal sovereignty and is deeply committed to furthering anti-colonial abolitionist work.