Doulas provide aboriginal birthing support
For many indigenous cultures, childbirth is a spiritual event involving community and ceremony.
Yet, numerous First Nations and Métis women in Alberta must leave community behind as they travel from rural reserves to give birth in urban hospitals. A newly formed group of doulas, who provide support to moms and their partners in preparation for childbirth, believe they can change that.
The women met in Edmonton over the weekend and hope to make culturally appropriate support available to more aboriginal women throughout their pregnancies, births, and early days of motherhood, should they want it.
The hope is more women will eventually be able to give birth in their own communities, said Nadia Houle, a doula with a decade of experience behind her and one of the group’s initiators
Having another woman in the room who shares your spiritual understanding of birth, can be comforting, said Heather Houle, an indigenous woman who’s served as a doula on and off for the past 18 years and coincidentally, shares the same last name as Nadia.
When a woman is in labour she is connected to the spirit world and should be revered, Heather said.
The need for cultural birth support is “really great,” said Brianna Olson, a social worker with iHuman Youth Society. As a social worker she’s supported some of the young First Nations women she works with through their births and is close to completing her doula training.
While Olson notes she’s a visitor to the Treaty 6 territory, which is Cree, she is an Anishinaabe Objibwe woman and understands the value of tradition.
She asks the women she supports what birth traditions are important to them.
For one woman she sang ceremonial songs to help with natural pain management.
For another she will support her in keeping her placenta, which is normally disposed of through the medical system, for an important cultural ceremony.
Alberta Health doesn’t cover doula services, although some funding is available for midwifery. While Health Canada’s First Nations and Inuit Health Branch doesn’t fund doula services either, indigenous women who must leave their communities to give birth can access funding for a doula to accompany them.
About 40 people have joined the Alberta Indigenous Doulas’ Facebook page.
The Alberta group is forming on the heels of similar initiatives in Manitoba and B.C.
“A lot of our women experience high rates of sexual violence, domestic violence,” said Jessica St. Jean, one of the women behind B.C.’s ekw’í7tl Indigenous Doula Collective.
“We want to work toward … once again supporting and lifting up our life givers as respected,” she said.