‘Supporting the Sacred Journey’: Causal stories and the ‘problem’ of Indigenous Parenting
This article explores “causal stories” (Stone, 1989) in constructions of social problems experienced by Canadian Indigenous peoples in six documents focusing on Indigenous families and parenthood produced by a variety of official agencies. Two recurrent themes in causal stories were identified: “cultural deprivation through disruption” and “parenting as root of problems”. Solutions tended to focus on building strength through support and cultural renewal, the latter appearing as glocalised mainstream Euro-American therapeutic discourses and parenting advice. It is argued that attention is potentially deflected from material inequalities, while glocalised therapeutic and parenting discourses may act as a Trojan horse for greater intervention into and monitoring of family life.