CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Renowned UMD tribal child welfare researcher retires

Star Tribune - 5/21/2021

DULUTH — For decades, Priscilla Day has pushed for Native American child welfare reform both locally and nationally.

"We have so many Indigenous children in the system, and that has persisted," Day said. "There is still a lot of work to be done."

Day, a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, retires this week from the University of Minnesota Duluth but will continue working as a national consultant. Amid a persistent disparity in the number of Native American children placed in foster care in Minnesota, the UMD social work professor and researcher has helped change the way the state's child welfare workers are trained. Day has been with UMD since 1993 and served as director of the university's Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies for 13 years, which offers training on the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. The center's curriculum — the only of its kind in the state — prepares students to become effective child welfare practitioners, particularly with Native American families. Here are excerpts from an interview with Day.

Q: How does the Black Lives Matter movement align with your work?

A: In Minnesota, people often aren't publicly racist, but they are stuck in that caste where certain people are supposed to run things and everybody else is below them. I think trying to help people understand that is the basis for unconscious bias and having those difficult conversations — not allowing me as a Native woman to be put in a box as 'lesser.' Black Lives Matter has presented the country and Minnesota with an opportunity to look at that.

Q: What changes have you seen recently in how tribal cases are handled?

A: There is a national movement toward practices that tribes have been using for a long time for family preservation. Tribes have a lot to teach states and counties. A lot of people are looking deeply into the impact of poverty and the role that plays in kids ending up in child protection. Kids in foster care often have very poor long-term outcomes. So [there is a movement] toward supporting families rather than removing children and traumatizing a lot of people in that process.

Q: Why is it important for new social workers to learn about Native Americans and historical trauma?

A: It gives people an experiential opportunity to feel what it would be like if you were losing your homelands and your children taken to boarding schools, where many died. As these policies that are genocidal in nature are happening, you can see the number of people shrink. It's very powerful. It helps them understand historic loss and that the removal of children is still happening.

Jana Hollingsworth • 218-508-2450

___

(c)2021 the Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Visit the Star Tribune (Minneapolis) at www.startribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.