| This study was designed to examine and evaluate historical Aboriginal child welfare policies and practices in Canada during the 1960s and 1970s. The child welfare policies and practices were critiqued by incorporating an Aboriginal, Anti-Racist, Ethnographical and Critical Auto-biographical approach and methodology.;These theoretical and methodological lens support a wholistic paradigm thus, lending itself to use my own life experiences and testimony as a case example. Key areas related to child welfare were examined through utilizing medical, educational, social services, personal and collective perspectives and voices. Each institutional and personal construction addresses issues related to key questions including asking: How can we understand the workings of Aboriginal child welfare policies, specifically the Adopt Indian Metis Policy of the 1960s? How have Aboriginal children in the child welfare system been historically constructed by various institutional sources, and what kind of disjunctures took place between these constructions and a child's experiences? How can we begin to assess the impacts for Aboriginal children, and how their needs were met within these constructions?;These questions have important implications for social work theory; practice and group work for the cohort that grew up in the 1960s and 1970s and more broadly, children in care. Further, it is believed that this research will have positive implications for Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal social workers and that the topic of Aboriginal Child Welfare is of significant importance to the social work field and will impact our policy, research, training and practice issues and Vision in urban and rural communities. Importantly, it is believed that this thesis will act as a catalyst for conducting a study that would examine a particular case in relation to the effects of the above mentioned Aboriginal child welfare policies and practices.;The potential benefits of this qualitative study on historical Aboriginal Child welfare are examined. It is believed that this qualitative study and methodology would be relevant and welcomed in other social work contexts. |
