Te Tiriti o Waitangi more than an historical artefact in social work education

Two weeks ago, Duncan Garner read aloud excerpts of a letter from a disgruntled ex-first year social work student on his politics podcast. Garner decried the apparent emphasis on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Māori cultural learning, climate change, and other topics that he constructed as impractical in the ex-student’s former institution. Throughout the 25-minute-long podcast, Garner keeps returning to the idea that social work education programmes, and tertiary institutions in general, are orthodox institutions that don't teach people how to think, only what to think. He claims that there is no room for disagreement, that students must endure having Te Tiriti o Waitangi and other topics he decides are irrelevant "shoved down their throats". It’s important to understand this attack on political and socio-cultural learning in social work education for what it is: part of the wider anti-Māori, anti-social, and anti-planet reactionary politics that are favoured by our current government.

Honouring, activating, and even understanding Te Tiriti o Waitangi is not the orthodoxy in our current political environment. The past two and a half years have seen a barrage of attacks on both Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the founding partnership agreement of this country, and on how Te Tiriti o Waitangi functions in practice in organisations like Health New Zealand and Oranga Tamariki, the two largest single employers of social workers in the country. 

The National-ACT-NZ First coalition government has recently taken steps to sideline iwi Māori input into the health system through amendments to our national health legislation. They destroyed Te Aka Whai Ora (the Māori Health Authority) less than two years after its birth because of what it promised – greater Māori control over Māori health aspirations and services. Despite the narrative of a focus on core business used to support these reforms, health services are barely functioning. Surprising no one, the money and effort spent on changing signage from ‘Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand’ to ‘Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora’ has not resulted in better healthcare for anyone, anywhere in the country.

This government have also recently rolled back section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 that placed a legislative responsibility on Oranga Tamariki leadership to ensure improved outcomes for tamariki Māori. They specifically targeted Māori specialist roles in child care and protection in their mass redundancies, including those that work with iwi and Māori community organisations to divert children away from the state care and protection system. Meanwhile, the past two years have seen a huge increase in reports of concern of child neglect and abuse, more children in state care, and an increase in reports of abuse in state care. Core community family and social support services have been defunded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, forcing many to axe social work and other support roles, with some services forced to close up shop after decades supporting their communities. 

Five minutes into the podcast, Garner states that social work education at that institution has been “taken over by ‘woke ideology’ which gets in the way of students simply trying to learn practical social work skills". As with all professional degrees like nursing, teaching, or law, experiential “real life” learning in a professional environment is a core part of social work education. This is where students learn what it’s really like to be a social worker in the field. Ironically, it is increasingly challenging to support this practical social work learning that Garner states has been subordinated by ideology because of the vicious cuts to health and social services that Garner and his ilk support.

Students in social work need to understand some of the “big picture” context that shapes their subject of interest. In Aotearoa, understanding Te Tiriti o Waitangi, colonisation and racism, and Māori knowledges and approaches to wellbeing and social care are some of the most important “big picture” contexts for future social workers. Having a critical understanding of the historical and contemporary impact of these topics on the people social workers support in the community are some of the fundamentals of good social work practice. That’s part of why they are the foundation of both our professional competencies for registration and our national code of ethics. 

The other part of this picture is the recognition that as a profession, social work must do better for whānau, hapū, and iwi Māori. Historically, social workers have been not only complicit in, but actively involved in devastating racist harm to the children and vulnerable adults they were meant to care for in state and faith-based care, in psychiatric and disability institutions, and elsewhere. Right now, social workers practice in organisations where Māori and other marginalised groups continue to have worse outcomes, particularly in child protection, justice, and health services. 

Social work education has an ethical responsibility to support future social workers in understanding why these inequitable outcomes exist, and how they can avoid unthinkingly perpetuating them. It is our job as educators to support the growth of their skills in the “nitty gritty” of social work, and also to help them develop the knowledge and values needed in ethical and effective social work practice. Social workers that do not have the skills to recognise and reject racist, or otherwise biased practice and decision making, in themselves are dangerous. 

Garner makes the point that students who get As are supposedly leaving social work due to ideology. I make the point that social work learning is about much more than the mark students get on an academic assignment. It’s also about problem solving, ethical decision making, critical thinking, empathy, relationship building, courage, and justice. If that sounds like a “woke echo chamber” to some, then so be it.

Kendra Cox (Te Ure o Uenukukōpako, Te Whakatōhea, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Porou, Pākehā) is a lecturer and Doctoral candidate in social work at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland.