The Praxis of Love: Love as a Decolonial and Political Practice in Human Service Work with BIPOC Children, Youth, and Families

Abstract

Implicating myself in Métis scholar Natalie Clark's question “who are you and why do you care?” (2016, p. 48), this chapter traces the theorization of love in the Human Services, with a focus on the field of Child and Youth Care. I explore love as an ethical, political, and necessary force in times of ongoing colonial and state violence against Indigenous and racialized peoples (Ferguson & Toye, 2017). I go on to highlight my graduate research as a Child and Youth Care Masters student and educator, grappling with my own settler identity as a diasporic, queer, ciswoman of color, and questioning my complicity as a settler body on stolen Indigenous lands. The chapter includes vital knowledge from my research with Sisters Rising, an Indigenous-led, community-based, participatory study that uses arts-and-land-based ways of knowing to honor and uphold stories, art, and knowledge from Indigenous and racialized young peoples and communities. By tracing the reflections on decolonial love shared through Sisters Rising, I consider ways that racialized settler practitioners might engage a decolonial love ethic in praxis. Calling upon critical feminist, Indigenous, and postcolonial scholarship and brilliance, this chapter invites other settler practitioners, specifically those who identify as racialized or people of color to reckon with the intricacies of our collective complicity in notions of settler purity and apolitical practice (Shotwell, 2016). Throughout the chapter, I highlight conceptual approaches for loving politicized praxis rooted in movements toward social justice, Indigenous sovereignty-building, and decolonization.

Citation

Moreno, S. (2022), "The Praxis of Love: Love as a Decolonial and Political Practice in Human Service Work with BIPOC Children, Youth, and Families", Wane, N.N., Todd, K.L., Chau, C. and Watts, H. (Ed.) Decolonizing and Indigenizing Visions of Educational Leadership (Studies in Educational Administration), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 195-211. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83982-468-520221012