Decolonizing Birth: Women Take Back Their Power as Life-Givers

This article relates Zintkala Mahpiya Win Blackowl’s experience of giving birth to her six children in the comfort of home and safety of a sacred space. Writer Sarah Sunshine Manning relates how a heavily pregnant Blackowl, who is Sicangu Lakota and Ihanktonwan Dakota, joined the Standing Sioux Rock reservation resistance camp. This is where she eventually gave birth to her baby girl, Mni Wiconi (Water of Life). This story reflects the larger Indigenous birth movement in which Native-American women reclaim not only their roles as life-givers and birth-workers, but also their rights to their bodies, traditions and birthing experiences. Counteracting the medicalised and colonised hospital-based birth environment, nurses such as Nicolle Gonzales, Navajo executive director of the Changing Woman Initiative, promotes Indigenous birth and midwifery knowledge; Jodi Lynn Maracle, traditional doula of the Tyendinaga Nohawl nation, works towards the reclaiming of Indigenous women’s powers, self-determination and ancestral traditions. Photo Credit: Unknown