Indigenous birthing helps ensure the well-being of the mother and her child, the continuity of culture and anchors physical relationships to lands and waters within homelands. Inter-generational and community transmission of knowledge related to these practices is a foundational component of cultural and spiritual identity. Professor Aimée Craft is undertaking a new project to preserve and rebuild these practices, while exposing the harmful interventions that threaten them.
Funded by an Insight grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Professor Craft’s project, entitled “Anishinaabe birthing reclamation,” addresses the systemic discrimination experienced by Indigenous persons in provincial/federal healthcare systems. For more than 60 years, under Health Canada's Evacuation Policy, Indigenous women who live in rural and remote areas of Canada have been evacuated to urban areas at 36 to 38 weeks of pregnancy to give birth in hospitals. They are removed from their homes, families, communities, and territories in order to privilege medical intervention at birth, often against their own personal wishes. This policy does not coincide with Indigenous understandings of family and community or historical practices of home and community birthing or provide space for the continuity of cultural, spiritual and health practices.
Professor Craft’s project will support the development of an Anishinaabe birthing advisory with Grand Council Treaty #3 (GCT3) women, Elders and Knowledge Keepers. The advisory will aim to reclaim Anishinaabe birthing practices by supporting a shift from the medicalization of birth to an approach that emphasizes family and community involvement in connection to the land and water. This project will develop resources to support Anishinaabe birth helpers, and a report outlining project findings will be widely distributed to relevant government agencies in the hopes of influencing health law and policy.
The research team is led by Professor Craft and Elder Sherry Copenance of the University of Manitoba. Community-based organization team members include Darlene Curci, the Indigenous Systems Coordinator for Grand Council Treaty #3 (GCT3); Stephanie Sinclair, a research and policy analyst at the First Nations Health and Social Secretariat of Manitoba (FNHSSM); Elaine Ross, an Indigenous midwife with the Ontario Association of Midwives; Alisa Lombard, principal at Lombard Law, as well as a part-time professor in the Common Law Section; and Becky Holden, a policy analyst with the Ontario Association of Midwives’ Indigenous Midwifery Team. The team will also include members of a birthing advisory, elders, knowledge keepers, Indigenous midwives and doulas, law students, and other highly qualified personnel.
SSHRC Insight Grants support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities. The goal of the Insight program is to build knowledge and understanding about people, societies and the world.
Congratulations to Professor Craft on advancing this important work!