Abstract

In Chile, social work in indigenous communities has been met with ongoing resistance and tensions. These have been constant between indigenous and non-indigenous people, a product of racism that permeates daily relationships, the lack of intercultural educational policies, and lack of recognition of indigenous nations and communities. As a discipline, social work has incorporated some initiatives to educate students and researchers from a critical lens, which has given room for some processes of indigenization, decolonization, and localization of social work. This chapter presents the experiences of three social workers who have grappled with the decolonization of social work education in distinct university contexts (northern, central, and southern Chile) and with diverse indigenous groups in Chile. We critically connect these experiences with three main concepts: (i) colonization, (ii) racism, and (iii) geopolitical positionality. Through the analysis, we observe tensions and challenges in each of these dimensions, with a particular emphasis on processes to decolonize social work education and the cultural response toward indigenous social work education. There is also a comparison of experiences based on the different geographical regions in which the universities are located and in which distinct roles as social work researchers, educators, and students emerge. The chapter concludes by extrapolating implications for the discipline and formal social work education in Chile and Latin America.