Josie
Chase
When
the following interview was first published, Josie Chase,
Mandan/Hidatsa and Yanktoni/Hunkpapa, MSW, was a PhD
candidate. Since then Chase earned her PhD at Smith College
and has continued making many contributions to the field of
children and family services, including developing a model
of practice for Native Kinship Care.
Healing in Harmony with our Culture
You have spent many years doing front-line social work with
children and families. Now you are starting out on some new
adventures. Before talking about your work could you please
say something about your journey in becoming a social
worker?
I am
Mandan/Hidatsa on my father's side and Yanktoni/Hunkpapa on
my mother's side, and a member of the Awaxa clan. I was
raised on the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota. My
mother worked in school food services for 35 years and now
works as an aid in special education. My father was a
rancher who encouraged creative thinking and a sense of
adventure. Both have supported me in my endeavors over the
years.
My inspiration and motivation to pursue education came
largely from my grandmothers, both of whom raised their
children as single parents during the depression years. My
paternal grandmother. Anna Fredericks Chase, shared with me
how she always yearned to attend college. But in the early
1900's this wasn't encouraged with young women. My maternal
grandmother, Josephine Gates Kelly, attended Carlisle
Indian School in Pennsylvania for 12 years and then
returned to North Dakota to serve as Chairwoman of Standing
Rock Sioux Tribe in the1950's. Both grandmothers encouraged
me to acquire an education so I could help the people.
I can see the impact of boarding school and oppression on
them. They were both fluent speakers of the tribal
languages, but they didn’t teach these languages to their
children, who are my parents, because of the fear that came
from being punished in boarding school. Yet they always
recognized the value of our culture and practiced our
traditions.
My grandmother, who was the Chairwoman, saw the need to be
part of the process of improving our lives. Taking
responsibility for ourselves. Taking initiative.
Understanding who we are and that we are a highly-evolved
civilization.
When I went to
college I thought I was going to be a nurse, but I found
that involved a lot of memorizing. I also found that I had
a more natural ability helping people problem solve. Once I
started learning more about that in coursework I took to it
like a fish to water.
When I did some field placements in an urban Indian clinic
and in the school system, I saw a lot of native people
having a difficult time accessing services. I also saw that
I, like other Natives, could connect with Native children
and families more easily than non-Native students could.
These experiences helped me see that healing needs to come
from within our culture. You have to be sensitive to what
the clients identify as their needs rather than coming in
with a structured plan or methodology and trying to
superimpose that on the culture.
You
received you BS in psychology from Portland State
University and your Masters in Social Work from the
University of Denver. As an Indian woman, did you face any
special challenges in school?
In
college people were open and interested in my perspective
and background. This was very different from my experiences
in elementary and high school where I was rarely
encouraged, and I didn’t feel validated for academic
abilities. In fact, I didn’t think that I had much ability
or capacity for academic achievement.
There were times throughout high school and college when I
had a real difficult time fitting in because I came from a
different perspective. But I could think back and say: I
know who I am, and regardless of what’s going on, I have
the foundation and security of my family and my culture to
support me through this. Knowing what my ancestors endured,
often kept me going.
What
kind of work have you been doing?
Since
receiving my bachelor’s degree, my employment has been in
the field of children and family services. I’ve had the
opportunity to work with a variety of tribes in the
Northwest in both urban and reservation settings. I was
also fortunate to work with youth and families at Taos
Pueblo in New Mexico. These experiences afforded me
cross-cultural practice skills from a tribal perspective
and enriched my knowledge base significantly.
In 1992 I began working as a social worker at The Casey
Family Program in North Dakota. Initially I was in the
Bismarck office, which is off the reservation. There I
worked primarily with non-Indian children and foster
parents doing intake and case management. When I moved to
the Fort Berthold office on the reservation and started
working with kinship care, it was a whole different ball
game.
What
is kinship care?
In
traditional foster care, strangers take care of children.
In kinship care, relatives take care of their nephews or
nieces or grandchildren. Over the years, people have worked
with kinship care the same way that they worked with foster
care, but that approach hasn’t work very well because the
child and family usually have a history together.
Coming from the mindset of traditional foster care, it’s
not easy to recognize the strengths of kinship care, but my
thinking evolved because I had to make it work. My focus
now has been on the strengths in a kinship placement and
making those strengths work.
What
do you see as some of the strengths?
One, because
the caregivers are relatives of the child, they are usually
more committed to the child and more willing to hang in
there with the child than maybe a non-relative placement
might be. Second, usually the child and the kinship
caregivers have a prior relationship, and they practice the
same culture. The caregivers also often have knowledge of
the child’s history and extended family, so the child isn’t
displaced from his or her roots.
Kinship care has been an integral practice in tribal
cultures for centuries, long before the establishment of
formal child welfare services. Kinship care allows children
to maintain family and cultural ties, whereas foster care
often separated children from these natural helping
systems.
How
do you work with kinship caregivers?
From the
beginning, one must respect their perspective and include
them as equal team members and as experts in certain
aspects of case management. One must also be sensitive to
the dynamics of historical relationships among family
members that existed prior to placement. Of greatest
importance is that you are working with the entire extended
family system. You are not limited to the youth and foster
parent dyad, as is common in non-relative care.
Although,
kinship care has been used predominantly by people of
color, these people weren’t receiving services because they
weren’t licensed. The children and families in kinship care
have the same needs and issues as children and family in
traditional foster care, but the children in kinship care
were not getting services such as assessment, counseling,
advocacy and medical and dental care. And the adults
weren’t getting education, financial support and respite
care.
Is
that changing? Is it possible now for Indian kinship
caregivers to get licensed and be funded for providing
care?
It
depends. Policy varies from state to state, which, in turn,
impacts tribes that receive state funding. However, since
tribes are sovereign entities, they do have the option of
setting their own policy and standards in accordance with
their culture, resources, and needs. Additionally, recent
legislation, under the Adoption and Safe Families Act, has
been more inclusive and supportive of kinship foster care.
I
hope that all kinship care will be adequately funded soon.
What were some of your other tasks at Casey?
I
assessed the needs of the children and families on an
ongoing basis and supported them in any way that I could.
My job was to help children through their loss and grief
issues and to facilitate relations with their birth
families.
It’s very rewarding. I have one youth who communicates with
me every year even though the last time I worked with her
was in the 80s.
What
have been some of the other rewards of your
work?
To see the
progress of individuals over time and the changes in
practice. To see policy makers recognize the value of
kinship placements and to see resources directed toward
establishing and stabilizing those placements.
What
is your current work?
This
year I started developing an independent consulting and
contracting practice. I’m doing consulting work with a
couple of different projects around child welfare practice.
I’m also involved in the Takini
Network, and I do some
presentations on kinship care.
I understand that you are a Ph.D. candidate in clinical
social work at Smith College in Massachusetts.
I
thought long and hard about going back to school and
consulted with friends and relatives. I felt that I had
accomplished a lot in the area of practice but I wanted to
go further and develop culturally syntonic clinical
interventions—healing interventions that are in synch or
harmony with the culture.
I was going to
school full time and working time and that had taken a toll
on me so I had to leave my full time work, and I’m striking
out on my own.
Good
luck to you!
This article
was first published in the Summer 2000 issue of
Winds of Change. (The cover
artist is Helen Hardin, Santa Clara
Pueblo.)