RURAL SOCIAL WORK

One thing that I particularly like about HSU’s approach to social work is their commitment to a practice with Native peoples, and an emphasis in studying about their history, their role in a rural environment, and their current strengths, as well as their struggles, despite these hardships. They are a resilient people and are to be admired and treated with respect and compassion. Studying about them has been a very enlightening experience, and one which I will always treasure. In light of our class on Communities, this subject matter is a potent one. The book, Rural Social Work, does provide us with a taste of what it was, and is, like to be a Native person, and how social work developed among rural peoples. I wonder, at times, what this area, Humboldt Co., would have been like if the Native population were left alone to develop, or not develop, the land which lies amidst the Redwoods and the sea. What would have happened to the land if the white man hadn’t confiscated it, and the Native peoples were allowed to flourish and grow at their own pace and in their own time? Could this have happened? I think so, if not for the greediness of the white man, and his desire to possess and control everything, including the land.

But, since the white man did place Native peoples on reservations, did clear-cut the land, and did fish the lakes, streams, and oceans, as well as pollute the waters and the skies and the air we try to breathe, humankind looks toward a government that will take care of them and their ways, including a social welfare system. Although the book says that rural areas are “dynamic and rapidly changing” (Scales & Streeter, 2004, p. 44), we hold onto a “romantic notion [which] portrays rural America as made up of pristine, sedate, unchanging pockets of nostalgia” (Scales & Streeter, 2004, p. 44). Social work is a product of this notion. Progress, as such, is a white man’s view of the world. Sure, we have medical care systems, systems of education, libraries, an agricultural system that produces mass amounts of food and transports it to far-away places throughout the world, etc., etc. Even the terms gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, which represent the ideas of community and rural ways of life vs. urban and an impersonal way of life, originated in Germany, a white-man centered country. It is all about relationships. And, because of relationships, we have a program known as social work. It is about systems of social concern, systems made up of “progressive” men from European cultures, and socialization. But, have we really progressed? Daily, we live under a threat of nuclear war and annihilation by other “socialized” countries; we kill and maim other people in wars, as well as our own people; we terrorize our own children by our words and actions, leaving them crying into the dark night. Yet, we move on, as a society, as a nation, as a world. Globally, which is how we now think of the world, we can only see our little place in it. But, we must be able to see our place in that world. And that world for me, is to aid others, and to see that we can affect others lives-as other people have affected my life. I would like to give back to that small, little world that I exist in, something that others have given to me-a sense that life is worth the living, because its alternative will only happen much too soon. As we all move towards a time of death, may we all see a hope in the light, and make of this world a better place.

Scales, T.L., & Streeter, C.L. (Eds). (2004). Rural social work: Building and sustaining community assets. Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole.