7: Post-Colonial Setting Flashcards
medicine wheel
physical, emotional, spiritual, mental
Indigenous people in Canada
Indigenous = First Nations, Metis, Inuit
= 5% of Canadian pop.
= Ontario is home to the largest number of Indigenous people
~50% in urban areas
Colonization
over 500 years ago
European drive for empire and new territories to govern
Structural violence embedded in law, the social imagination, and ‘modern’ economic progress
Post-colonialism is an illusion as long as the Indian Act is used to govern Indigenous life
- children are found in the rivers, fill the prison
- women and 2-Spirited people are 6-10x more likely to be murdered
“Indian” Treaties in Canada
There was a lot of coercion in the signing of historical treaties
less common in the modern treaties = BC, Nunavut, and Quebec
Some outcomes of colonialism
-Infectious disease
-HBC, crazy water, subjugation of women, decimation of wildlife
-Reserve system and Indian agents
-Denied language, cultural rituals, and traditional way of life
-Residential schools
- The 60s scoop = “lost generations”
-Unable to vote or buy alcohol until1960
-Constitutional Reform (1982, 1984)
-Murdered and Missing Women
Objective of canadian government
hope of the church
civilizing the uncivilized = assimilation through residential schools
educate them under Christianity
Irniktakpunga
Delayed labour can result in boys becoming girls
- The sex of a baby not determined fully until the moment of birth (“I made a boy”)
- characterized by a quick labour
Contextualized within the context of Inuit women’s resistance to the medicalization of childbirth and colonizing policies
Changes in birth laws
60s and 70s: “low risk” Inuit women were assisted during childbirth by non-Inuit mid-wives in their communities
80s: total removal of all births from communities
- changed due to obstetric practices in the South, not because of the dangers associated with community births
Government doesn’t pay for community births but provide $ for all women to travel South to deliver
Beliefs and traditions
Very special relationships between mid-wife & children delivered
- kinship between those delivered by the same woman
Bodily transformations from ‘girl’- ‘boy’
= biological and social gender traditionally within Inuit culture
- BODIES transforming (recognized with inflamed genitilia)
- GENDERS transforming (boys who become seamstresses and girls who become hunters)
Diverse perspectives on it within contemporary settings
- believe vs don’t
“primitive” physiology of mothers or perception?
women delivering their ‘own’ babies and the idea of “normal” childbirth across cultures
- “Highly efficient birthing machines” = quick, seamless
Despite being successful “machines”, Inuit women’s pregnancy is still constructed as complicated, unpredictable
- management and control of labour
- perceptions of social change and women’s increased contact with the South
how Inuit women see it:
- locate the changing perceptions in the medical (and political) system’s insistence on interventions that complicate births
flaws with universality/management
criteria used to design and implement interventions for Inuit women is based on the bodies/ labour of Caucasian women
“normal” labour experiences vary across cultures
change in physiology of Inuit women to align with Southern Canadian
Canadian obstetrics
marginalization of midwifery by medical obstetrics
- disappeared from public health care systems and mainly survives in the home-birth sphere (radical, dangerous, no public funding)
reduction of births in smaller communities, increasing large urban
- don’t share a common ideology with mid-wives/physicians and Inuit clients
- increasing reliance on technology
- “accident” in northern community births were sole responsibility of physician involved = southern obstetrics = safeguard
- try to control speed of labour to align with by the book medical education that labour goes in steps
Struggles for recognition in their own land
Along with self-determination and land rights, childbirth has become a highly politicized and galvanizing issue in the North
Having their traditions be respected, supported, and acknowledged is key to Inuit personhood, womanhood, the family and their communities
- connotations between historical legislation, place of birth, and entitlement
- exposes the politics of the issue of childbirth, which might not be apparent at first
Controlling the pace of labour by Unuit people…
-makes boys
- eases anxiety and pain
- challenges medical dominance
- reasserts a woman’s and women’s rights
- decolonizes medical relationships
- asserts Indigenous rights
Community-based birthing centres:
- contribute to a revitalization of collective hunting and food sharing
- greater respect for women
-reduce family violence
“Myths” can also be as real as “science”
focus of Kasabonika Indigenous Youth Futures Partnership (IYFP) project
+ 2-eyed seeing
= youth resilience and community engagement through leadership
approach is collaborative, trauma-informed, and over the long term
*Two-Eyed Seeing = “To see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing, and to see from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing, and to use both of these eyes together
