Towards anti-colonial approaches in social work: Enhancing culturally safe HIV care for Indigenous communities in Manitoba and Saskatchewan
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The social work profession, with historical ties to colonial harm, must adopt decolonizing and anti-colonial approaches to promote culturally safe HIV care for Indigenous communities. This study examines how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted health and social services throughout Manitoba and Saskatchewan, significantly limiting access to essential services and traditional practices for Indigenous peoples living with HIV. Using a Two-Eyed Seeing approach, this study integrates Indigenous and Western research approaches. Community-based participatory research and Indigenous Storywork comprised the overall research design. An Indigenous Elder, a cultural knowledge holder, and a community guiding circle of Indigenous peoples living with HIV helped guide the project. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 51 participants, recruited through community organizations, social media, and peer networks. The pandemic's impact on health, access to services, and ceremonies were explored. Data was analyzed using thematic analysis grounded in Indigenous Storywork principles. The pandemic significantly impacted traditional ceremonies, vital for the spiritual and communal well-being of Indigenous peoples living with HIV. Participants displayed resilience by adapting spiritual practices amidst restrictions. Social workers and other service providers acknowledged the crucial role of ceremonies in offering spiritual and cultural connection but showed varying levels of knowledge in connecting Indigenous clients to ceremonial practices, some facing organizational and systemic barriers. This study advocates for a systemic shift in social work to adopt decolonizing and anti-colonial practices that integrate Indigenous knowledge, ceremonies, and medicines. Such an approach advances culturally safe HIV care that respects Indigenous sovereignty, promotes wholistic well-being, and actively addresses structural colonial violence.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".