Volume XXX Number 4 Summer 2017 FREE CURRENT OPTIONS IN PREGNANCY, BIRTH AND PARENTING INDIGENOUS WOMEN HEALING THROUGH TRADITIONAL PRACTICES What does culturally appropriate indigenous midwifery care look like? How can it heal indigenous mothers, families, and communities? Traditional birth positions, a smudging ceremony in active labour, and a lightning fast birth in just under three hours! featured photographer: Steinhauer Photography The Magazine of the Association for Safe Alternatives in Childbirth (ASAC) www.birthissues.org Empowering Mothers from Conception to Cradle Offering the following health and wellness services: Acupuncture Hypnobirthing Massage Therapy Naturopathic Medicine Osteopathy Paediatric Cranial Sacral We have 3 Certifed Lactation Counsellors: “Breastfeeding Trudi Rumball, R.Ac is an instinctual and natural act, Carleen Tralenberg, R.Ac but it is also an art Dr. Jennifer Yee, ND that is learned day by day.” 780.410.1100 www.muscleelements.ca Established 2008 | Direct Billing | Online Booking CURRENT OPTIONS IN PREGNANCY, BIRTH AND PARENTING contents Join the conversation about options in birth and parenting ASAC (Association for Safe Alternatives in Childbirth) @BirthIssues Volume XXX Number 4 Summer 2017 REGULAR FEATURES To contact an ASAC board member, please see page 64. ASAC Information and Contacts ................................... 72 ASAC President’s Message .......................................... 6 Editor-in-Chief: Erin Mayou, [email protected] ASAC Birth & Baby Talks ........................................... 67 Editors: Erin Church, Catherine Disnard, Sarah Ligon, Thea Luig, Alberta Area Midwives and Practices ............................... 74 Isabella Sanchez, Samantha Stupak, and Dawn Wickhorst Birth Announcements ............................................. 11 Community News ................................................. 60 Proofreaders: Joelle Bakker, Rosie MacDonald, Penny Mahan, Niko Community Resource Listing ...................................... 70 Palmer, Shevaun Pontin, and Cheryl Williams Dictionary of Terms ............................................... 64 Layout: Joanne Meredith with Lemon Squirrel Editorial ........................................................... 4 Advertisement: Morgan Reid, [email protected] Lactation Consultants @ Home .................................... 69 Midwifery News .................................................... 8 Distribution coordinator: Michelle Neraasen, Placenta Encapsulation ............................................ 68 [email protected] Prenatal Classes ................................................... 71 ASAC address: 7219 – 106 Street, side door BIRTH STORIES Mailing address: Box 1197, Main P.O. Edmonton, “Nikosis Sakihaw: My son he is loved.” .............................. 13 Alberta Canada T5J 2M4 The day I tapped into my inner warrior ............................. 18 Website: www.asac.ab.ca Margot Anne: A healing home birth ................................ 22 Becoming a mother: My memories of giving birth. 26 Printed in Edmonton, June 2017, by CentralWeb. Coming full circle ................................................. 31 Birth Issues welcomes unsolicited electronic submissions of birth Like a lightening bolt: A home birth story ........................... 36 stories, articles, poetry, reviews, birth announcements, artwork, and photographs. Please submit them to the Editor-in-Chief at ARTICLES [email protected]. National Aboriginal Council of Midwives’ Core Values . 40 Sandy Lake to Toronto: A future Indigenous For more information, please read the editorial policy on the website midwife recalls her family’s history of birth ......................... 41 www.birthissues.org. Improving Indigenous maternity care Each issue prominently features an advertising photographer. by improving access to traditional birth practices . 43 This is a wonderful opportunity to showcase your work and obtain NACM’s Policy Recommendations ................................. 46 extended advertising exposure. For more information, please Historical trauma, breastfeeding, and healing read the writing guideline in the ‘Get Involved’ tab of with Camie Jae Goldhammer ...................................... 48 www.birthissues.org How babywearing preserves culture and revitalizes communities ....................................... 52 Indigenous mothering and ceremony: UPCOMING THEMES & Contemporary art practices of The Ephemerals .................... 56 SUBMISSION DEADLINES Journeying Home ................................................. 59 Tiaras and Bowties Gala – Fourth Year Exceeded Our Goal! . 62 Send us your birth stories, articles, and photos at any time during the year (or by the deadlines if you want your article Read back issues of Birth Issues magazine, visit www.birthissues.org to fit the upcoming theme). If you have a topic or a story that is dear to you, and does not fit the theme, please submit it Steinhauer Photography anyway—we want to publish those too! Featured Photographer: Fall 2017 Tribute to Noreen Walker: Remembering a Pioneer Send submissions by June 15. On stands September 4. Winter 2017 Maternal Mental Health: Birth Trauma and Loss Send submissions by October 1. On stands December 4. Spring 2017 Empowering Birth: Self Advocacy and Coming into our Power Send submissions by January 4. On stands March 5. www.birthissues.org | SUMMER 2017 | 3 editorial ERIN MAYOU HHP What a tremendous honour it is to step into the the one to wrap it up and send it to the printers. As a woman role of Editor in Chief. I have been with Birth Issues whose four children have ancestry from northern Manitoba since 2011 as an editor and have felt a great pride Ojibwe, I hope that they grow to feel pride in this the same in sharing your birth stories over the years. Some way I feel connected to being French or Irish. I can only hope have stayed with me ever since – telepathic twins are one, and that the hard work many are doing to share their stories—here a child lost during residential school – some have haunted in this issue but also through reconciliation work—will help me, some have lifted me up and helped me heal from my own my children, as they get older, understand their own family births. I hope I have helped some of you heal a little along the history, as well as a cultural history that I can only stand on the way as well. outskirts of. I sometimes feel lost as how to be a supportive I have to give tremendous thanks to our former Editor in ally without overstepping my bounds: how do I show my true Chief, Claire MacDonald. She did all the amazing and obvious admiration and respect for a culture that was taught to me as a things to make it possible for me to take on this position: from child without the eyes of appropriation or cultural genocide? mentoring me through the editing process five years ago, to The first spiritual teachings I was taught by my Caucasian developing meticulously detailed guides for everything Birth mother was of the medicine wheel, it was only later as a young Issues. More importantly, Claire, you believed in me at a time adult that I learned these teachings were denied to Indigenous when I was having a hard time doing that for myself. This is people that believe in them; that Indigenous people from something I struggle with, generally, but you have always been across the world have been ridiculed, mocked, and abused for a strong and steady support. I know so many women over the these beliefs. Is it appropriate for me to identify with it then? last decade, and more, have felt that from you in your work I still do not have a good answer for that. I can only hope my with Birth Issues, as a doula, and in your birth advocacy. Thank children will feel proud in their skin, however they end up you for all you give to the community! identifying. I would also like to thank Niko Palmer for stepping in to help My partner has often made the lewd joke, with a little wink, with the last few issues, putting out the last issue, and guiding that I have a little Ojibwe in me. I have read scientific studies me—as well as just plain old encouraging me—as I took on that tell me the mother and her fetus exchange genetic this new position. Your hard work towards ASAC over the material, and others that tell me a woman can have genetic many years is such an asset. I am glad I first connected with material left in her from the sperm of her sexual partners. you several years ago, on the edge of my interest in the birth I know in a completely different sense than he does, that, world. I hope I can make you, and so many strong women indeed, what my partner says is true. It certainly has never working in the birth community, proud. given me any sense of blood memories, although being an empath I believe I may have experienced what my friend I also need to say thank you to the Birth Issues team. Thank calls, “Land memories.” The land I am on was once territory you to Sarah Ligon and Rosie Macdonald for returning in your the Plains Cree used freely and hunted upon. Incidentally, just roles as editor and proofreader respectively. Samantha Stupak southwest of me, the Battle River was named because it acted was a fledgling editor of stories when she was last with Birth as a natural border during a long standing battle between the Issues and is now returning as a graduated midwife tackling Plains Cree and the Tsuu T’ina. However, I do not know much our articles. Congratulations, Sam, on all your hard work and of that history as when I