Using the Core Values of the NASW Code of Ethics as Guidelines for Social Work Research in Native Communities: Reflections on a Masters Research Project

Using the Core Values of the NASW Code of Ethics as Guidelines… (596 kb PDF)

Trevor L. Swoverland, MSW and Erin M. Geary, MSW

Introduction

During the last few years we have been involved in several research projects with Native scholars, and in Native communities. As graduate students in the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Department of Social Work, we completed our Master’s research on tribal sovereignty in American Indian child welfare. We also assisted in the development, distribution, and analysis of one tribe’s biennial community needs assessment. Currently employed by the Department’s Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies, we are part of a team that provides contracted program evaluation for another tribe’s child welfare services. During the course of our project, we had great learning experiences and the opportunity to develop relationships with Native scholars and social service leaders. We do not claim to have discovered any secret method or perfect example of how to do cross–cultural work with American Indian communities. However, we believe that our experiences may be instructive for non–Native social work students and researchers involved with tribal communities.

“The Role of Indigenous Scholarship in Preserving Native Life,” the theme of this issue of Bemaadizing, is an important topic. We have no particular expertise in it, and even if we did, it seems to be a discussion more appropriately held between Native people. However, our experiences doing research in Native communities have led us to the conviction that non–Indians have an enormous responsibility to conduct this work ethically; all the more given the legacy white researchers have left in their wake. Doing this requires some sort of ethical standard, and we argue that for social work students and researchers, the National Association of Social Workers’ (NASW’s) Code of Ethics provides a set of “core values” to which their activities should adhere. The Code is by no means a comprehensive or flawless document, but it does provide a good baseline from which to approach the work. While the Code’s section on research is important, this essay concentrates on how some of the principles expressed in the Code’s Preamble speak to non–Native researchers working in tribal communities. In order to do so, we consider our Master’s research project – with its successes and its blunders – in light of the “core values” espoused by the NASW.

Literature Review

It is important to understand the impact white researchers have had on indigenous communities; this is particularly true for white researchers themselves, as we are often incognizant of the effects of our work. Before describing our experiences, we felt it useful to provide a brief glimpse of the literature as it relates to the damage done in Indian communities by non–Native researchers. We also present models for research that are ethically–sound and useful to the communities themselves.

Native communities throughout the Americas have had the unfortunate experience of having their worldviews and life ways erroneously described and interpreted by white researchers. Frequently such scientists have failed to recognize the diversity of opinions and perspectives among members of the same tribe (Davis & Reid, 1999; Letiecq & Bailey, 2004). They have communicated to the outside world inaccurate explanations of cultural norms, values, and traditions as a result of failing to work with the community to identify sources recognized internally as authoritative (Deloria, 1991; Swisher, 1996). Researchers have maintained the same paternalistic orientation toward tribal peoples which has influenced the development of U.S. Indian policy over the last two centuries (Caldwell, et. al., 2005).

Non–Native research involving American Indians has been carried out with a lack of interaction with the subject community, both during project development, and after the research has been completed (Hillabrant, 2002; Sobeck, Chapleski & Fisher, 2003; Wax, 1991). Often the result has been a collection of data that fails to shed new light on issues facing the community, the only tangible benefit being career advancement for the author, including recognition as an “expert. ”As noted by Smith (as cited in Hand, 2003), “…it [research] told us things already known, suggested things that would not work, and made careers for people who already had jobs. ”Finally, much non–Indian research in indigenous communities has been heavily focused on deficits while ignoring inherent strengths and failing to consider historical context (Letiecq & Bailey, 2004). Little attention has been paid to the resilience and resolve Native communities have shown during 400 years of resistance to colonialist and imperialist pressures from European and Euro–American populations.

A growing body of literature discusses these unethical and culturally destructive approaches to research in Native communities, and suggests ways to improve the relevance of research to American Indian peoples while addressing the disparity in benefits derived from it. The development of a participatory model, in which Native communities participate not only as subjects, but also as study designers, data gatherers, and analyzers, has been suggested (Brayboy & Deyhle, 2000; Davis & Reid, 1999; Fisher & Ball, 2002; Swisher, 1996). Such models stress the importance of the development of trusting relationships with Native communities and the assumption of a perspective of co–equality between researchers and the community (Harala, et.al., 2005; Zaferatos, 2003). It is also important to include perspectives that build on the inherent strengths and resources within Native communities (Red Horse, 1980), rather than focusing solely on the needs. By rethinking the research process in light of this body of literature, scholars carrying out social research in Native communities can ensure that their work serves not their own interests, nor those of the academic community, but those of the people among whom they study and whose information makes such work possible in the first place.

Integration of the Core Values of the NASW in to Social Work Research

The NASW Code of Ethics was approved by the body’s Delegate Assembly in 1996, and was revised in 1999. The Preamble lists the following as being the “core values” of the social work profession: service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence. “The Code is relevant to all social workers and social work students, regardless of their professional functions, the settings in which they work, or the populations they serve,” (NASW, 1999, p.2). Social workers who engage in community research are bound by these guidelines, as the NASW is the professional organization for social work practitioners in the United States.

It is unfortunate that the literature specifically connecting the NASW Code of Ethics to social work research is nearly nonexistent. The Code is a well–organized and applicable body of ethical imperatives which are meant to govern social work practice. As such, it is important to draw a closer connection between the Code and the design and implementation of research carried out by social workers. We have attempted to seat the important suggestions described in the literature review within the context of the NASW Code of Ethics section describing the Code’s “core values. ”As a final caveat, we want to acknowledge that while the NASW Code of Ethics is a great document for provoking discussion and guiding practice, the social work profession, especially as it has been active in Indian communities, has far too often fallen short of its values. We are aware of the history white social workers have created in their interactions with Native people, families, and communities, and we have no starry–eyed visions of that past, or of the present. We are not apologists for the profession, nor do we hope to sweep its complicity in various atrocities under the rug. It is our intention to describe how the ideals of the profession can inform culturally relevant social work research, even if those ideals have often not been seen in practice.

For the purposes of this essay we have chosen three of the core values outlined in the Code of Ethics, and in the next section they are discussed and our Master’s research project is considered in light of them.

NASW Code of Ethics—Social Justice

Social workers pursue change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people.

From its earliest days, and despite its sometimes misguided efforts, the purpose of the social work profession has been one of advocacy for marginalized groups. Whether through supporting low wage workers, working on suffrage issues, or mobilizing for civil rights campaigns, social workers have challenged those in power. This orientation is what drew us to the cause of tribal sovereignty, which we came to see as an obvious social justice issue.

In the summer of 2006, we enrolled in the “American Indian Social Policy” course in the Masters of Social Work (MSW) program. The course provided an overview of historic and contemporary governmental policy vis–à–vis Native peoples in relation to land rights, freedom of religion, governance, and child welfare. The readings assigned and the ensuing discussions in class gripped both of us in a profound way. Having begun the program as child welfare fellows with a desire to work in the field of public child welfare, we still held issues of child health and welfare to be of primary importance. We had also embraced social justice as a foundational and often neglected principle of the social work profession. Tribal sovereignty in Indian child welfare emerged as an issue which drew from both of those perspectives. We saw that considerable damage had been done in the past, and too often continues to be done, when ethnocentric and white–focused child welfare standards and practices are forced on American Indian families and communities.

We should point out that our interest in these issues was not purely an intellectual curiosity, or even recognition of the inherent injustice and corresponding need to do something about it, but, at the risk of sounding partial and unscientific, it was a real, heart–felt emotional connection to the issue. The severe consequences of oppressive child welfare policies in Native communities, and the complicity of our own chosen profession in carrying them out, impacted us deeply. This was not just an interest, but something we felt driven to pursue.

Effective work for change is often furthered by bringing together people separated by distance and role, but for whom the central issues and concerns are the same. In this project we drew information from a wide range of individuals in our focus groups. Tribal social services leaders, American Indian lawyers and legal advocates, urban Indian agency outreach workers, and state Department of Human Services workers all participated. Through our contacts with tribal and county social workers and our distribution of the survey to them, conversations about tribal sovereignty occurred in unit meetings and hallways; consciousness of it as a social justice issue was raised. It is unclear whether or not these conversations continued, but at least for a while the issue was elevated.

Finally, and building on the last point, an important task of social justice work is to make the issue in question, and the relevant information, visible to as wide an audience as is practical and possible. In the case of this project we have had some success, but further growth is needed. We were able to present our findings at the 2007 National Indian Child Welfare Association conference, and have been engaged in ongoing discussions about the research with national–level Indian child welfare scholars and policy makers. The text is being edited for possible publication, which would make the results accessible to a broader audience. In retrospect, we certainly could have done a better job of presenting the findings, in particular to those who have the capacity to make substantive policy changes with respect to Indian child welfare practice in Minnesota. As our ultimate purpose was to make our project as useful as possible to Minnesota tribal communities, our distribution of the paper to tribal social services leaders should be augmented with more open and broad presentations of the results.

NASW Code of Ethics—Competence

Social workers practice within their areas of competence and develop and enhance their professional expertise.

The curriculum of UMD’s MSW program is heavily influenced by an awareness of the need for cultural competence in practice. As we began to talk to our research advisor about identifying a research topic that would be of use to Native communities, we were aware that we would need to take several steps to ensure that our project was relevant to those who were intended to benefit from it.

An obvious gap in a list of strengths we brought to the project was the fact that neither of us had spent much time in Ojibwe communities, and we are both white. Our people were not the ones who experienced genocide, ethnic cleansing, and political marginalization at the hands of European and American colonizers; on the contrary, our people have directly benefited from those atrocities. Without living through them, or being the descendant of those who did and by extension a partaker in their legacy, we lacked an important paradigm from which to view our topic, examine our research processes, and interpret results. Aside from what we had learned in our classes, we had little familiarity with traditional Ojibwe worldviews, which further limited our own perspectives on issues in Indian Country. While our goal was to be of service to tribal communities in the struggle for increased expression of tribal sovereignty, we had a fundamental lack of shared experience from which to draw. This was potentially catastrophic to our goal.

While the two of us are very different in how we approach research and writing, and we bring different and complimentary skills to the table, we are both thoroughly Western. The cultural milieus from which we have come have shaped us in ways that presented obstacles to our ability to work effectively with Native communities. We tend to be task–centered, linearly organized, analytical, and deadline–oriented. Although these traits are conducive to doing well in academia, they are, in many cases, antithetical to working effectively in Anishinaabe communities, where often it is more important to invest time and build relationships than to hunt for facts or approach people with an agenda. This difference was a potential pitfall for us, and unfortunately, we succumbed to it more than once.

After we had been developing our ideas for a few months, we were joined on the project by a Native student who has many more years of life experience than either of us, and who operates from a relatively traditional Anishinaabe paradigm. Early in our collaboration there were several instances in which he was trying to communicate to us a hole in our reasoning, an important new point to consider, or culturally–appropriate methods for finding information we needed, and we simply were unable to follow because we were too entrenched in our own way of thinking about the project. Despite all of the theories and ideas about culturally competent social work practice we had studied in our coursework, we must have come across in these instances as quite thick–headed and self–assured. In white academic culture, where acknowledging ignorance is often a cardinal sin and “fake it ‘till you make it” is often the rule, this tendency would’ve been expected. But it is just this type of behavior that often makes academics irrelevant to Indian people. We owe a great debt to our colleague who was a shining example of a patient teacher – a role he should not have had to fill as our research partner – and who helped us become aware of these tendencies we displayed frequently in the beginning of our process.

Thankfully, our competence grew throughout the project. One positive step we took was to meet with tribal child welfare supervisors and leaders in order to find out the information related to tribal sovereignty and child welfare that would be the most useful for them and beneficial to tribal children and families they serve. In an effort to maintain a community–based research process, we attended a regularly–scheduled quarterly meeting of the American Indian Projects advisory council for a couple of hours one morning, and had lunch with participants that afternoon. For good reason there was a lot of initial skepticism about our intentions, but having our department’s Director of American Indian Projects introduce us and give a statement of support was helpful. The result of this meeting was the generation of research questions which encapsulated things these tribal workers and leaders felt they needed to know about Indian child welfare practice in Minnesota. We could have set off on our own to figure out what we wanted to know about the topic and designed a study with no input from Native people, but the end result would have been another study whose relevance to Indian people was even smaller than the amount of time it would have taken a tribal social services director to run our report through a shredder. By partnering with these Indian professionals early on, their needs were considered as seriously and weighted with as much importance as our own. In our view this is an important ethical responsibility of social work researchers.

Another active step we took was to involve Indian professionals in every phase of the project’s development and execution. Both of our faculty readers were Native scholars, another gave us frequent feedback, and shortly in to the process we were joined by the Native MSW student mentioned above. Any decision we made about process or content was turned over and over to make sure that it was adequately informed by Anishinaabe cultural values and specified needs. We were, effectively, white guys carrying out a research project approved, overseen, and modified by Native supervisors, influenced by a Native co–researcher, and crafted to meet the needs of Ojibwe communities by community stake holders.

NASW Code of Ethics—Importance of Human Relationships

Social workers understand that relationships between and among people are an important vehicle for change. Social workers engage people as partners in the helping process.

Building and strengthening relationships is a foundation of the social work profession, whether one is working as a hospital social worker, a therapist, a school counselor, an organizer, or a community researcher. This is not a field built around detached and dispassionate interactions with those whom we serve. While the ability to think critically and objectively is important, the orientation of our profession is one of being close to those we help. Our relationships should be seen as partnerships between equals rather than as hierarchies in which the practitioner is elevated above her or his “clients.” This perspective is one that is shared by American Indian communities.

It was obvious from the outset of our process that if we were going to undertake this project in fulfillment of our requirements for earning the MSW degree, we could easily be seen as a couple of white guys looking to use Native communities for our own benefit. Not only did we not want to be seen in this light, but we felt that any project coming from such an orientation could be damaging. Indian Country has seen its share of researchers who have taken much and given little in return, and we wanted to make sure not to repeat that experience. We felt very sincere about wanting our project to be of benefit to tribal communities, and we knew that it would be important to design and carry out the project with that motivation placed at the forefront, and for it to be well communicated. Of course communicating it well meant it was important to actually put in “face time” and get to know the people we wanted to benefit from the study.

Because the research project was bound by graduation deadlines, we did not spend as much time in the communities on the front end as would have been ideal. Our process would have been better if we had been able to speak in depth with tribal social services supervisors and spend more time in reservation communities. The project we carried out would have been better suited to a multiple year study than a Master’s research project of one year.

Because we had insufficient time to cultivate meaningful relationships with a broad range of people in the communities, we relied on the good reputation and solid relationships the American Indian Projects has with Minnesota Ojibwe communities. We worked closely with the Director and Associate Director of American Indian Projects, both Band members of an Anishinaabe tribe in northern Minnesota, and through them were able to make contacts within the communities. Because they know us well, they were comfortable arranging for us to meet with tribal child welfare supervisors and elders who were involved in Center projects. Once these connections had been made we were able to develop relationships with representatives of several tribal agencies, which made collaboration possible. If we had ignored such efforts and simply trudged off toward the reservations with no connections, or without respected Native community members to vouch for us, we would have rightly been seen as only being concerned about our own interests. Developing good personal relationships is essential to doing this work well, and to being an ally. While we would have liked to have spent more time early on in the process engaging community members, we were able to take advantage of previously existing institutional relationships to work toward developing our own personal connections to tribal community members.

As noted above, we also came to greatly value our relationship with our Ojibwe co–author. While the commonly–held wisdom among Western researchers is that it is important to maintain personal emotional distance from the study topic, this man taught us a lot about how the power of conviction anchored in personal connection can inspire better work. It was through conversations with him and other Native colleagues that we explored the emotional depth of the issues, and that we came to see and feel that the history and policies we were studying had a tangible impact on people we had grown to care about. Our colleague helped us to humanize this study, and he did so in a way that has forever changed how we will approach social justice research both within and outside of American Indian communities. This relationship proved to be one of the most valuable experiences of our process, and it is a clear illustration of human relationship being the basis for good social work research.

Conclusion

Research done by social workers cannot be separated from the ethical standards which govern social work practice. These standards are articulated well by the NASW Code of Ethics, and are based on identified core values of the profession. Through frank reflection on the research process in light of these social work values, scholars in the field can begin to align their work with these principles. Nowhere is this more vital than in relation to social work research done in American Indian communities. Social workers and academics have, historically, played a significant role in the destruction of Native cultures, and this legacy requires us to be vigilant in examining our motivations, processes, and use of the products of our research.

It is possible for social work researchers to serve as allies to Native communities. Because “being an ally” is a phrase heavily entrenched in the vernacular of social justice work. As a result, the more it is thrown about the less it means in real, living terms. The core values enshrined in the NASW Code of Ethics provide a set of guidelines by which researchers can ensure their work is being done properly and with the right purposes in mind. Commitments to social justice, competence and cultural relevance, and the importance of developing relationships and partnerships can help to ensure that social work researchers are working to meet the needs of Native communities. Despite some academic opinions, we are not entitled to trudge through Indian Country collecting data and making pronouncements from the ivory tower. If we feel moved to provide our expertise to Indian communities, we must do so on their terms, in partnership with them, working together on the agendas they prioritize, and not as experts descending from on high.

It is our hope that we have demonstrated how the core values in the NASW Code of Ethics can be used to ensure that social work research done in Indian communities meets our profession’s commitments and foundational principles, and how such an assurance will result in research that is more useful to Native people.

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How to Cite this Article

APA

Swoverland, T.L. & Geary, E.M. (2008, Spring). Using the Core Values of the NASW Code of Ethics as Guidelines for Social Work Research in Native Communities: Reflections on a Masters Research Project Bemaadizing. Retrieved [add date of access], from http://www.bemaadizing.org/2008/03/14/using-the-core-values-of-the-nasw-code-of-ethics-as-guidelines-for-social-work-research-in-native-communities-reflections-on-a-masters-research-project/

MLA

Swoverland, T.L. & Geary, E.M. “Using the Core Values of the NASW Code of Ethics as Guidelines for Social Work Research in Native Communities: Reflections on a Masters Research Project.” Bemaadizing. Spring 2008. [add date of access], <http://www.bemaadizing.org/2008/03/14/using-the-core-values-of-the-nasw-code-of-ethics-as-guidelines-for-social-work-research-in-native-communities-reflections-on-a-masters-research-project/>.