Helping Professional Practice with Indigenous Peoples

This book discusses issues helping professionals must confront when working with indigenous peoples, particularly the Bedouin Arab. Northern-based helping professional theory and methods have historically been aloof to the concerns within such societies as the Bedouin-Arab, particularly regarding their culture and religion, family structure and group orientation, and cultural and religious strategies for dealing with psychosocial problems. The literature has made some strides in making its myriad epistemologies less culturally oppressive but much remains to be done. According to the authors, it is essential for social welfare practitioners, structures, and Bedouin-Arab communities to integrate paradigms, which the helping professional carries out in practice methods and which could lead to the ongoing emergence of a newer social work epistemology, better anchored to the needs and realities of the Bedouin-Arab world.