ABSTRACT
Social work practice in Canada increasingly reflects the diversity of the country. But this diversity is not based only on the successive waves of immigrants who have arrived continuously since the first European contact with the indigenous populations in the seventeenth century. Contemporary Canadian social work practice also is a reflection of the issues surrounding the colonization of those Indigenous populations from the time of first European contact to the present day. Although this has been long neglected in discussions of policy and practice, the last three decades have seen an increasing awareness of the impact of two centuries or more of colonization policy, and in the twentieth century, of social work’s role in that colonization process. Further, the ongoing transmission to successive generations of the damage done by the residential schools, which operated from the 1860s until the 1990s, continues to play a significant role in shaping policy and practice. This chapter will trace both the historical context and the contemporary challenges to social work practice of the legacy of oppression and colonization of the First Nations peoples 1 and highlight responses by the social work profession to address these challenges, with attention given to the efforts of the Indigenous communities in Canada.
