Decolonizing Mental Health in the Helping Professions

Length: 2,000 words, or eight typed pages, double-spaced with one-inch margins, not including title page and references. Please use 12-point Times New Roman font.
Format: This assignment has two parts. The first section includes three short-answer questions (250 words each), and the second section includes one long-answer question (1,250 words). You should use at least eight academic readings from the course in APA format (one for each short answer, five for the long answer).
Description: Part A—Short Answer
Helping professions list:
• Social work
• Education
• Criminal justice
• Health care
• Psychiatry (from Unit 8)

Select one helping profession from the “helping professions list” above and answer the following questions in approximately one page (250 words) per question. You do not need to use essay structure, but you must reference at least one academic reading per question.

1. How has colonization influenced your chosen profession? Speak to the past and the present day.
2. In what ways has the profession contributed to the pathologization of Indigenous people? What is the effect on Indigenous people’s mental health?
3. Give specific examples of how white benevolence manifests in this helping profession. How does white settler “helping” end up “harming”?

Description: Part B—Long Answer
Select one helping profession from the list above—it must be different from the helping profession you selected in Part A. Answer the following questions in long-answer format in five pages (1,250 words). You do not have to use formal essay structure, but you must reference at least five academic readings.

1. Imagine and describe a possible contemporary scenario of white benevolence as an expression of settler colonial power in your chosen helping profession. This scenario should have both interpersonal components (the way people act) as well as systemic components (the way institutions act and function). Explain how “helping” has ended up causing harm and what underlying settler colonial beliefs/ideologies and structures inform the scenario.
2. Explain how to intervene and address this scenario by using the principles of decolonizing mental health that we have explored throughout this course. Be sure to provide clear and actionable strategies—pick solutions you think might work! Here are some examples (not exhaustive) of course concepts that could be helpful:
   o Positionality/self-locating
   o Decolonization is not a metaphor
   o Decolonial tree
   o Colonization as a social determinant of health
   o Storytelling
   o Resistance
   o Decolonizing trauma work
   o Wise practices
   o Resurgence
   o Art, laughter, humour
   o Activism and advocacy
3. Finish your long answer by sharing your opinion on whether it is possible to truly decolonize your chosen profession. Why or why not? What personal, systemic, and community changes would need to take place? If you argue that decolonizing this helping profession is not possible, elaborate on alternative forms of care and healing.
   Unit 7 Required Reading

Simpson, L. B. (2016). Indigenous resurgence and co-resistance . Journal of the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, 2(2), 19–34.
Select two of the following three readings:
Ansloos, J., Morford, A. C., Dunn, N. S., DuPré, L., & Kucheran, R. (2022). Beading Native Twitter: Indigenous arts-based approaches to healing and resurgence . The Arts in Psychotherapy, 79, 1–11.
Burns, M. M. L. (2020). Reclaiming Indigenous sexual being: Sovereignty and decolonization through sexuality . The Arbutus Review, 11(1), 28–38.
Morris, K., & Morris, L. (2020). Camping out with Miss Chief: Kent Monkman’s ironic journey . Studies in American Humor, 6(2), 265–284.

Unit 8 Required Reading

Hutcheon, E. J., & Lashewicz, B. (2020). Tracing and troubling continuities between ableism and colonialism in Canada . Disability & Society, 35(5), 695–714.
Linklater, R. (2014). Decolonizing trauma work: Indigenous stories and strategies. Fernwood Publishing.
• Read Chapter 4: Psychiatry and Indigenous Peoples, pp. 101–131
Whitt, S. (2021). “Care and maintenance”: Indigeneity, disability and settler colonialism at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, 1902–1934 . Disability Studies Quarterly, 41(4).
Yellow Bird, P. (n.d.). Wild Indians: Native perspectives on the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians . National Empowerment Center.

Unit 9 Required Reading

Gebhard, A., McLean, S., & St. Denis, V. (Eds.). (2022). White benevolence: Racism and colonial violence in the helping professions. Fernwood Publishing.
• Read pages 1 to 11 of the Introduction.
Nahanee, T. M. L. (2020). Decolonize first: A liberating guide & workbook for peeling back the layers of neocolonialism. Nahanee Creative
• Read “Helping and Harm,” p. 5 and “Intention and Impact,” p. 6.
Allen, W. S. (2022). Tracing the harmful patterns of white settler womanhood. In A. Gebhard, S. McLean, & V. St. Denis (Eds.), White benevolence: Racism and colonial violence in the helping professions (pp. 86–103). Fernwood Publishing.
Simpson, L. B. (2017). Land as pedagogy. In As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance (pp. 145–173). University of Minnesota Press. Please read pages 145 to 157 only.