Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Children and Youth Services Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth The Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies: Systems change through a relational Anishinaabe worldview Wendy Haight a, ⁎ , Cary Waubanascum a , David Glesener a , Priscilla Day b , Brenda Bussey b , Karen Nichols b a School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 1404 Gortner Ave, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA b Department of Social Work, University of Minnesota, 1049 University Drive, Duluth, MN 55812, USA ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Systems change Child welfare Indigenous ICWA Disparities ABSTRACT The dramatic overrepresentation of Indigenous families in North American governmental child welfare systems remains one of the most pressing and neglected issues facing Tribal Nations, child welfare policymakers and practitioners today. This paper is the third in a series of three papers (Authors) presenting an ethnographic study of the Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies in the Department of Social Work, University of Minnesota – Duluth. The current paper focuses on the perspectives of the Center’s staff and allies, which is grounded in an Anishinaabe worldview, on the process of systems change in child welfare. It draws upon in- depth, semi-structured interviews with 13 participants with diverse roles and extended relationships with the Center. Participants provided knowledge and wisdom on how to create and sustain trusting, collaborative re- lationships within sovereign Tribal Nations, county and state child welfare systems. They described how Center staff members are then able to create bridges (mesosystems) across Indigenous communities and child welfare systems with the trust built within each of those systems. These mesosystems are sustained over time through continued opportunities for engagement and collaboration. These processes are illustrated through several case exemplars of change affected by the Center, tribes and their collaborators: state legislation to strengthen ICWA, implementation of statewide continuing education for child welfare professionals, and an innovative ICWA court. The primary barrier to system change noted by participants is structural racism. Advice for those moti- vated to support systems change includes establishing close links with Indigenous communities. 1. Introduction At the end of the day the overarching thing is the broken system. It’s hard to work magic when everything’s broken. There’s so many bar- riers, not just for families, but for workers who are trying to do good practice. And then you throw in a person of color into this broken system with systemic racism. It’s just like that hill turned into a mountain with an avalanche coming down at you and you’re still at the end of the day just trying to do good practice and work with families on what’s best for them (Jane, Indigenous social worker, Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) supervisor). Child welfare is so adversarial. The structure is so compliance- based. It doesn’t get to how things are happening and why they happen. I’ve met very few if any social workers who ever became social workers because they just really wanted to exercise their power. But the system itself? There’s a whole bunch of really good people who want to make a difference in people’s lives, and they’re trapped in a system that isn’t structured for them to be able to do that (Ellen, white ally and retired social worker). Despite the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978, the persistent, dramatic overrepresentation of Indigenous families in North American governmental child welfare systems remains one of the most pressing and neglected issues facing sovereign Tribal Nations, child welfare policymakers, and practitioners today. A primary goal of the Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies (hereafter, “the Center”), located in northern Minnesota, is to reduce these disparities by strengthening child welfare practice with Indigenous children, fa- milies and tribal communities, and building tribal capacity. Their work includes the education of future social workers (Haight et al., in pro- gress), and continuing education of current child welfare professionals (see Haight et al., 2019). It also includes addressing the system barriers noted by Jane and Ellen that impede their students’ and colleagues’ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105601 Received 10 July 2020; Received in revised form 9 October 2020; Accepted 9 October 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: whaight@umn.edu (W. Haight), wauba002@umn.edu (C. Waubanascum), dglesene@umn.edu (D. Glesener), pday@d.umn.edu (P. Day), bussey@d.umn.edu (B. Bussey), knichols@d.umn.edu (K. Nichols). Children and Youth Services Review 119 (2020) 105601 Available online 14 October 2020 0190-7409/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T