Cultural Integrity and Identity: An Indigenous Social Work Educators Perspective

By:
Adrianne Junellie Vienna Taungapeau
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By association, the difficulty of maintaining cultural integrity as a minority in a Western framework continues to presume utilitarian primacy for students from extremely diverse realities. Social work education continues to be informed primarily by mainstream thinking, eurocentric worldviews and frames of reference that have extremely limited scope. Educating Indigenous First Nations people’s means they are often provided tools that are limited in scope and application in the communities they end up working in. The common response of politicians and other critics in society today is “Why do we need to keep funding initiatives that are not effective” becomes a fair and reasonable analysis of the often traumatic events that plague indigenous people and service providers in Aotearoa New Zealand. In order to address the imbalance of political maneuvering there needs to be definitive support for the development of a programme that provides students with the means for success. The central aim of any quality social work programme is to facilitate learning that provides good grounding in the fundamental elements of the field of social work, a clear notion of their true identity and draws on the diverse range of “lived realities” of the individual students to ensure that they capture the true essence of what it means to be an indigenous person who aims to become an effective Social work practitioner.


Keywords: Cultural Integrity, Diverse Realities, Indigenous First Nations People’s, Social Work Education, Identity, Lived Realities
Stream: First Nations, Indigenous Peoples
Presentation Type: 30 minute Paper Presentation in English
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Adrianne Junellie Vienna Taungapeau

Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Policy Studies
Faculty of Education, University of Auckland
Auckland, NEW ZEALAND

Adrianne Taungapeau is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Social Work and Youth Studies Programmes in the School of Social and Policy Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland. She currently teaches indigenous and professional development courses and is interested in the promotion of indigenous knowledge as a source of inspiration and innovation in the development of social and community work theoretical perspectives and professional practice in the Aotearoa New Zealand context. She has a keen interest in researching historical narrative and genealogy and how this creates an understanding of holistic wellbeing for practitioner and client and encourages students to utilise personal experience and knowledge as a foundation for growth and awareness.

Ref: D07P0103