Social workers urged to promote indigenous skills and knowledge

Dimapur, August 9 (EMN): North East Institute of Social Science and Research (NEISSR) commemorated the International Day of World’s Indigenous People on August 9 at NEISSR Conference Hall.
Addressing the social work trainees, Dr. Toli H. Kiba, assistant professor informed that there are approximately 370 million people who belong to different indigenous groups.
Pointing out the rich traditional knowledge that existed in Nagaland, she said indigenous people have skills set and knowledge which are indigenous and well preserved over the past many years. However, she lamented that many of these traditional knowledge are obliterated or replaced by the western education that we are imparted with.
While acknowledging the growth and changes which were brought about with the advent of the western education and Christian missionaries, she lamented that ‘we’ are quickly forgetting our roots and traditional knowledge of our forefathers that have always hold us in good stead.
“We are quick in adopting knowledge and practices which are developed in the western world. Thus, more often than not, we fail to replicate the same success that can be seen in other parts of the world where those methods and knowledge were contextualized and developed. The practices and models that we follow in social work are no different,” said Dr. Toli.
She urged the social work trainees to think out of the box and work towards developing models and knowledge of social work which will be suiting and fitting to the local context, instead of copying those models which were developed in a completely different context. ‘We should promote indigenous knowledge of social work practice’, she added.
In his concluding remarks, Dr. C.P. Anto also re-asserted the same dream of training social work professionals who can contextualise, understand and make use of the indigenous knowledge in their practice.
He urged the students not to be confined by conventional thinking but to have the courage to tread into the rich untraded treasure trove of indigenous knowledge that each community in Nagaland has to offer.