The Best of Both Worlds
Born on the land with helping hands.
The quilliq is a potent symbol for the Inuit.
For thousands of years, the crescent-shaped lamp, carved from soapstone and fueled by seal or beluga oil, was the only source of light on sunless winter days. It also brought warmth to the igloo so that food could be cooked and damp clothes dried. Traditionally, Inuit mothers tended the flame that enabled their families to survive the long, dark Northern winters. Though times have changed, the role has not.
“While our people have had to deal with significant changes over just a few generations, women continue to be at the very centre of the survival of the unique Inuit way of life,” says Rhoda Innuksuk, President of Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada.
It is not an easy way of life: most of Canada’s 50,000 Inuit live in the four regions of the Inuit Nunaat, or “Inuit homeland” that stretches from Labrador across Northern Quebec and Nunavut to the Northwest Territories. The remote, Northern communities often face harsh weather, acute housing shortages and a scarcity of services that Southern centres take for granted.
Pauktuutit represents Canada’s Inuit women as they deal with those challenges. With a board of directors made up of women representing Inuit communities as well as urban Inuit and youth, the national organization charts its course based on the directions provided by its membership.
“Pauktuutit is a vehicle to implement those directions,” says Innuksuk. “Our health and wellness priorities are completely contemporary, based on the key concerns of Inuit women today. And all of our work is Inuit-specific so that our responses to those challenges are grounded in Inuit culture and community values.”
A project called Born on the Land with Helping Hands – the Inuit Women’s Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy typifies the Pauktuutit response to a contemporary challenge. Designed and produced by Earthlore Communications, the calendar covers the three trimesters of pregnancy and provides plain language descriptions – in English and Inuktitut – of the baby’s development in the womb.
“The pregnancy calendar brings together traditional Inuit knowledge and practices with the best of Western medical knowledge and approaches to fetal development, pregnancy and childbirth,” says Innuksuk. “It represents the best of both worlds.”
Innuksuk says the calendar has been extraordinarily well received by Inuit women. “It’s a great example of what can be done. We’ve also distributed to our funders, to government and non-government partners, and they all have all been impressed.”
Having resources that are Inuit-specific is vital, given that solutions with a Southern focus are often inappropriate. Pauktuutit has spoken out clearly on how Southern medical interventions have sometimes worked against the social and cultural interests of Inuit women – especially the dramatic shift away from women giving birth in the community to having babies in Southern hospitals or regional centres.
“It breaks with traditional practices and disrupts lives and families,” says Innuksuk. “It also has displaced the Inuit midwives.”
Pauktuutit would like to see more health services in place for women to have their babies in their own communities. “We see it as validation of traditional Inuit midwifery. Of course, we’re not saying midwifery is the only way. We stress that it needs to be a women’s choice to have her baby in her home community or to go to an urban centre.”
Not being able to give birth in their own communities is not the only difficulty Inuit women face. It is one of many challenges that come with life in the North.
“There is a general shortage services,” says Innuksuk. “Housing is a critical issue – there is a crisis of overcrowding. Mental health services have been identified as a major priority. Also, we did an analysis of more than 20 years of resolutions passed at our annual general meetings and issues related to Inuit women’s equality have been consistently high as a priority – both within the Inuit world and the broader mainstream society.”
In dealing with these priorities, Pauktuutit bridges the gap between helping with “hands-on” project work and longer-term policy development.
“We are right there working in the communities, doing things like distributing the pregnancy calendar,” says Innuksuk. “And we’re here in Ottawa hammering out policy papers. In essence, one activity builds on the other. The project work drives our policy development.”
Comments
Dear reader, my name is
Dear reader,
my name is Andrea. I study midwifery in my first year at a university in England.
The reason I'm writing you is that I want to learn about indigenous childbearing and practice. The knowledge of natural remedies and herbal medicine in combination with woman's health has always fascinated me. The closeness of women in indigenous tribes is something I admire.
I would love to get an opportunity to learn and study between women of a tribe who still use their knowledge passed on by their mothers/midwifes.
With this email I ask you to consider my request, or pass it on to the right people, to come and stay with your tribe for 3-4 weeks in summer to learn your ways.
I also have a son of 6 years who would benefit from this experience as much as I would.
If you would like to find out more about me, please contact me and I will gladly answer all your questions.
Many thanks
Andrea
Aboriginal Pregnancy Calendar
Hi Andrea,
Thanks for your interest in the story about the Aboriginal Pregnancy Calendar. I suggest that you contact the Inuit Women's Association in Ottawa. Here is the link to their web site http://www.pauktuutit.ca/home_e.html . Ask for Tracey O'Hearn. She is the Executive Director and for whom we created the Calendar. She will be able to help with your request.
Thanks and good luck,
Sincerely Don Runge
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