1. How Indigenous People Are Excluded from Caring Their Children?

The “residential school” symbolizes the ultimate form of cultural violence by the state toward indigenous peoples in the Western history of child welfare, with the victims of residential school named as ‘the stolen generation’ by indigenous scholars. Although residential school has never been adopted in Taiwan, I argue that similar effects of residential school policy are replicated through the social organization of child care. The case of the aboriginal community-based child care program in 2008 will be analyzed to illustrate how indigenous peoples are excluded from caring their own children and how indigenous ways of care disqualified in the bureaucratic discourses of ‘safety’ and ‘quality’ in child welfare. Choosing the experiences of community workers for indigenous communities as the standpoint of my study, the analysis shows how the definitions of safety and quality reflect the worlds of urban Taiwanese people and indigenous perspectives are excluded as ‘unsafe’ and ‘inferior’. IE is adopted to give voices to front-line child care workers and validate indigenous perspectives in the coalition-building process among indigenous communities. Alternative discourses on safety and quality will be presented as a way to interrupt the circle of colonial relations in the context of the child welfare system.