‘Midwifery is an antidote to these traumatic processes’ says keynote speaker at Indigenous Midwifery Summit

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY—A Midwifery Pipe Ceremony was featured during the opening of the Indigenous Midwifery Summit 2019, held Feb. 12-13 at the Valhalla Inn in Thunder Bay.

“It was very powerful,” says Nipissing First Nation citizen Carol Couchie, co-chair of the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives and one of the women who conducted the ceremony. “There were two other Elder midwives or women that do other work and Loretta Afraid of Bear Cook was our leader.”

Couchie notes there were some young people at the summit who did not know what the role of a midwife is.

“They had no idea this could be possible and they were really talking about how it would have made a difference in their life,” Couchie says. “So there has been a lot of awakening and awareness and people have been very moved, emotional, with some of the presentations.”

Louise McDonald, a condoled Bear Clan Mother with the Mohawk Nation Council, and Katsi Cook, an Elder/midwife from Akwesasne, delivered a keynote address on The Rematriation of Birth on the second day of the summit.

“By the time our young women get pregnant, it is almost too late — we should be doing midwifery work in pre-teen and adolescence and equipping our young daughters with knowledge,” McDonald says during the keynote. “Every young girl in our community should be wrapped around by four women as the pillars to her growth and development. So that is what I like about the reconstruction of our puberty rites in Akwesasne.”

Cook, who was the founding Aboriginal midwife of the Six Nations Birthing Centre and a professional member of the College of Midwives of Ontario, says the summit was “great.”

“I’ve heard a lot of wonderful stories,” Cook says. “I’ve heard a lot from other midwives. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to reach out beyond the catchment area of my own work, which is primarily the Mohawk communities of Akwesasne and Kahnawá:ke and the extensions through the different midwives that are now in practice in those communities.”

The presentations included The Current Landscape of Midwifery in Ontario; Midwifery Core Competencies; Trauma Aware Practice; and Doulas in remote locations: training and collaboration with medical care providers. Panels were also held on Education Pathways; Effects of Routine Evacuation, Barriers to Rematriation of Birth; and Contextualizing Risk: Remote and Decolonized perspectives.

“One of the reasons we decided to have this conference is because we really recognize that Indigenous midwives are integral to the health of communities,” says Ellen Blais, director of Indigenous midwifery with the Association of Ontario Midwives, presenter of The Current Landscape of Midwifery in Ontario presentation and Oneida Nation of the Thames citizen. “We also recognize that there is now funding that the Association of Ontario Midwives supported through the Ministry of Health for Ontario, but we also recognize that there aren’t any Indigenous midwives north of Thunder Bay, in the Kenora corridor, Treaty #3 corridor [or] the Nishnawbe Aski Nations, especially targeted at the fly-in communities.”

Blais says the common practice of sending pregnant women from First Nations in northern Ontario to urban centres for care has been referred to as the “residential schools of medicine.”

“Midwifery is an antidote to these traumatic processes,” Blais says. “Midwifery returns birth to communities and supports family connection by providing culturally appropriate and primary care close to home.”

The summit included speakers and presenters from across the country, including Nunavut and Manitoba, as well as South Dakota.