MASTER OF SOCIAL WORK

COURSE LIST

SEMESTER ONE

SK628 Culture Camp

This course offers an opportunity for students to learn experientially about the traditional Indigenous worldview. This includes the values, philosophy, teachings, ceremonies, Creation relationship, and songs, dances, drums. The course will be delivered through a five-day program in a camp setting with the presence of Elders when students first enter the program. 

SK647 Elder's Teaching and Indigenous Identity

This course will enable students to spend individual time with Elders to consider their own understanding of the Indigenous worldview. They will reflect upon their character, nature, spirit, and practice so that their capacity to facilitate other people’s healing will be understood.

SEMESTER TWO

SK646 Holistic Healing Practice Practicum (3 days/week)

Students will explore concepts of healing that flow from a wholistic Indigenous and Indigenous worldview. Healing is understood to be the facilitation of a healing journey for the individual, their family, their extended family, their community, their nation, and for spiritual relationships. The focus of this healing journey is on enhancing the nature of Creation for future generations. Students will become conversant in the understanding of the use of Circle, medicines, ceremonies, and Elders. The use of the Circle process will be a key element of this course.

SEMESTER THREE

SK649 Aboriginal Program Practicum

A supervised field experience designed to develop competence pertinent to social work practice in the student's chosen area of concentration (29 weeks).

SK635 Indigenous Knowledge and Theory

This course will build upon the experiences and knowledge gained by students in the cultural camp setting. Elders will enable students to engage a learning and reflective process which uses the worldview of Indigenous populations. Restorative and healing notions which address the structural and institutional consequences of historical marginalization of the Indigenous worldview will emanate from this reflection.

SEMESTER FOUR

SK507 Social Justice and Transformative Social Work Practices

Transformative social work practice is understood to encompass critical reflexivity and action that aims to disrupt current social inequalities and manifestations of power inherent in the delivery of social services and community work. The fluid concept of social justice will be deconstructed and explored through a variety of theoretical lenses including, but not limited to Indigenous, anti-racist, feminist, queer, disability and transnational perspectives. Theories of progressive social change practices will be explored in order to lead the student to think about concepts such as colonialism, intersectionality, power and resistance within social work practices. Students will also be encouraged to engage in reflexivity with regards to their own experiences of intersecting identities and how they are situated within relations of power.

SK644 Aboriginal Kinship Structures and Social Work Practice

The community is the fundamental reference point for an Indigenous person. It is a source of identity development, for validation, for learning of culture (language, dance, ceremony, etc.) and for construction of the whole person (mental-spiritual-emotional-physical). Practice in the community setting is made up of understanding kinship structures, community solidarity, community action, and community nurturing for the present generation and for future generations. This course will enable students to examine the phenomenon of community in the lives of Indigenous populations, and how interventions into these contexts are an expression of healing processes. 

SEMESTER FIVE

SK645 Indigenous Research Methodologies

This course will enable students to accomplish knowledge building and capacity development while using a research process. Students will engage a wholistic Indigenous Research paradigm which seeks multiple intersecting sources of information within communities around issues which are considered by the community as vital to their understanding of given phenomenon. This research will be empowering to Indigenous populations and be an expression of decolonization processes.

SEMESTER SIX

SK648 Elder’s Teachings and Self-Reflection (Fasting Camp)

This course will enable students to express their own understanding of the wholistic Indigenous healing process, which they will carry into practice. They will present themselves to Elders and the community of scholars for presentation and affirmation of their capacity to facilitate such processes; whether at the individual, family (group), community, or policy level. Their capacity to undertake Circle processes will also be examined.