What I Learned When I Realized How Much I Didn't Know
How well can we truly understand a community whose history, culture, and experiences are different from our own?
And at what point does our belief that we are culturally competent prevent us from recognizing how much we have yet to learn?
In 2019, while pursuing my Master of Social Work at the University of Southern California, I participated in a national immersion experience focused on Native American children, families, and communities.
Our time included learning from members of the Lakota community on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation in South Dakota.
I entered the experience with an interest in cultural diversity, social justice, and understanding how historical experiences influence present-day communities.
But I left with something I hadn't anticipated: a much greater awareness of the limitations of my own knowledge.
What began as an educational experience became an opportunity to reconsider how I understood history, spirituality, cultural identity, and my responsibility as a developing social worker.
Whose History Are We Really Learning?
During our immersion experience, we visited Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial.
Like many Americans, I was familiar with the image of Mount Rushmore, although I knew relatively little about the history surrounding its creation.
What I had not fully considered was how differently a national monument might be understood depending on whose history is being represented.
For some, Mount Rushmore symbolizes American leadership and national identity.
For many Lakota people, however, its location in the Black Hills carries a very different meaning—one connected to sacred land, dispossession, and the history of colonization.
The experience encouraged me to question something that often goes unexamined:
Who gets to decide which stories become part of our collective history, and which stories remain on the margins?
I found myself reflecting on how historical narratives are shaped not only by what we choose to remember, but also by what we choose to omit.
As a Black woman, I recognized parallels with the ways African American history has sometimes been minimized, simplified, or presented without fully acknowledging the experiences of those who endured oppression.
Yet I also recognized that similarities between histories of oppression do not make those experiences interchangeable.
Each community has its own history, cultural identity, and relationship to the systems that have shaped its present circumstances.
Understanding those differences requires more than recognizing that injustice occurred.
It requires listening to how communities understand and tell their own stories.
Cultural Appreciation or Cultural Representation?
Our visit to the Crazy Horse Memorial raised another set of questions.
Initially, I viewed the monument as an important recognition of Indigenous history and leadership.
However, as I learned more about the project and encountered differing perspectives, I began questioning the relationship between cultural representation and cultural authority.
Who determines how a culture is represented?
Who benefits economically from that representation?
And how much influence does the community being represented have over the narrative?
These questions are particularly important when cultural traditions, symbols, and histories become part of tourism or commercial development.
A monument or museum may introduce visitors to a culture they know little about. Yet representation alone does not guarantee that the community's perspectives are adequately understood or prioritized.
I also learned that Indigenous communities are not culturally or politically monolithic. Individuals may hold different views about how traditions should be represented, preserved, or shared.
This challenged my tendency to think about cultural groups as though they possess one collective perspective.
Respecting a culture also means recognizing the diversity of thought that exists within it.
When Child Welfare and Cultural Identity Intersect
Another significant part of our immersion involved learning about child welfare issues affecting Lakota families.
We discussed the historical consequences of family separation, boarding schools, and policies that disrupted Indigenous caregiving traditions.
These conversations were particularly meaningful to me because of my own experiences growing up in foster care.
I understood how separation from caregivers could influence a child's emotional development and sense of belonging.
But the immersion expanded my understanding of family separation beyond the individual child.
For Indigenous children, separation from family may also involve separation from tribal relationships, ancestral knowledge, language, and cultural identity.
This is one reason the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is so significant.
The law was designed to establish protections for Native American children and families while recognizing the importance of tribal sovereignty and cultural connections.
Our discussions highlighted the challenges some tribal communities experienced in maintaining appropriate placement resources and supporting families within their own communities.
What stayed with me was the realization that child welfare cannot be understood solely through the question of where a child will live.
We must also consider how placement decisions affect identity, belonging, continuity, and relationships with one's community.
Protecting a child involves more than physical safety. It also requires thoughtful consideration of the relationships and cultural connections that contribute to their development.
Spirituality, Healing, and the Limits of Western Knowledge
Perhaps one of the most personally meaningful aspects of the immersion involved learning about Lakota spirituality.
Throughout my life, I have been drawn to spiritual practices, reflection, and ways of understanding healing that extend beyond conventional Western frameworks.
During the immersion, I learned about the significance of ceremony, storytelling, relationships with the natural world, and spiritual traditions within the community.
Some of these ideas resonated with my own interests and beliefs.
However, the experience also encouraged me to recognize an important distinction between appreciating aspects of another culture and assuming I understand their deeper significance.
Spiritual practices do not exist independently of the communities, histories, and relationships that give them meaning.
Nor should Indigenous healing traditions be treated simply as techniques that professionals can extract and incorporate into clinical practice.
This raises a broader question about culturally responsive care.
How can clinicians remain open to different understandings of healing while respecting cultural boundaries, community authority, and traditions that may not be intended for outside interpretation?
For me, the answer begins with humility.
Scientific knowledge and clinical training are valuable. But they do not make us experts in every cultural understanding of human well-being.
Sometimes, our responsibility is not to interpret or explain another person's worldview.
It is to listen and recognize the limits of our own.
Cultural Competence Is Not a Destination
One of the most significant realizations I documented in my immersion journal was that I had overestimated my own cultural awareness.
As social workers, we learn about diversity, oppression, cultural responsiveness, and the importance of understanding different communities.
But knowledge acquired in a classroom does not automatically translate into a deep understanding of another person's lived experience.
The immersion challenged me to recognize that cultural awareness is not something we simply acquire and complete.
It is an ongoing process of learning, questioning assumptions, and remaining receptive to perspectives different from our own.
This is closely related to the concept of cultural humility.
Rather than assuming we can become fully competent in another person's culture, cultural humility emphasizes continual self-reflection, openness, and attention to power differences within professional relationships.
It asks us to consider not only what we know about others, but also how our own identities, assumptions, and experiences influence the way we interpret them.
There is a difference between learning about a community and learning to listen to a community.
And perhaps one of the most important forms of professional growth is becoming comfortable acknowledging what we do not know.
Turning Knowledge Into Responsibility
At the conclusion of our immersion, I developed presentations to share what I had learned with fellow social work students and professionals.
One presentation focused on child welfare issues affecting the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Another explored how policy influences tribal communities, including access to resources and land-related concerns.
I felt a responsibility to share what I had learned because community members had encouraged us to bring greater awareness to these issues.
But reflecting on that experience today raises another important consideration.
Sharing knowledge about a community carries its own ethical responsibility.
We must be careful not to confuse a brief educational experience with expertise.
We should distinguish between our personal observations and the perspectives shared by community members.
And we must recognize that the people whose experiences inform our learning should remain central to how their histories and concerns are represented.
The goal of cultural learning should not simply be to become more knowledgeable.
It should also influence how thoughtfully we act, how responsibly we communicate, and how willing we are to challenge the systems in which we participate.
Final Reflections: The Importance of Remaining a Student
Looking back on my 2019 immersion experience, I realize that some of the most valuable lessons were not the facts I learned.
They were the assumptions I began to question.
I learned that historical narratives can carry very different meanings depending on whose experiences are centered.
I learned that cultural identity and child welfare are deeply interconnected.
I learned that spirituality and healing cannot always be understood outside their cultural contexts.
And I learned that even when we approach another community with genuine respect and curiosity, we may still misunderstand important aspects of its experience.
Perhaps that is why cultural humility is so important.
It reminds us that professional education does not eliminate the need to remain a student.
As a social worker, I believe understanding people requires more than familiarity with psychological theories, diagnostic frameworks, or evidence-based interventions.
It requires a willingness to recognize that our knowledge is incomplete.
The more we learn about the world, the more opportunities we have to question the assumptions through which we've been understanding it.
And perhaps the most meaningful growth occurs when we stop approaching knowledge as something to possess and begin approaching it as a responsibility to understand.
