Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Indigenous health professionals and researchers must 'practice in two worlds'. They often experience professional interactions as intercultural encounters that are culturally unsafe for themselves and for the Indigenous peoples they serve. These situations tend to reify social conditions and practices that perpetuate the ill health of Indigenous peoples. On the other hand Indigenous professionals are also developing practice wisdom that enables them to resist these colonizing implications and to transform the events into opportunities for cultural liberation and enhanced wellbeing. Using an Indigenous and decolonizing methodology that draws on autoethnography, Indigenous story telling and memory work, the Indigenous researcher examined Indigenous research and professional social work praxis in-between Indigenous and Euro-western worldviews. Intercultural encounters were examined using a critical incident technique the presenter developed called Decolonizing Critical Reflection. This method enabled participants to dig beneath the surface of their experiences in order to unearth the worldview influences on themselves and within the event. She found that as opposed to assuming hybrid identities, perspectives and practices, the research participants remained Indigenous-centered while interacting in-between worldviews. Their practices entailed interactive attempts to decolonize the situational dynamics and to facilitate cultural safety for themselves and other Indigenous players in the event. Practice wisdom for navigating in-between worldview professional situations was illuminated.