Figure 1. First Nations Health Authority. Retrieved from http://www.fnha.ca/wellness/our-history-our-health

 

Since the 1500s, the European colonization of Canada has had a tremendous impact on the society, culture and population of Aboriginal people. For in order to achieve colonization, there must be a radical marginalization of groups of people. As a result, traditional norms of Aboriginal power, culture, economy, and society have become debunked and rewritten by colonial settlers in many ways, such as the Indian Act and 60’s Scoop (as discussed in later posts). Therefore, as an act, colonization is inarguably dehumanising and, in the case of Canada and First Nations people, an act of cultural genocide.

 

Following contact with European settlers, early alliances between First Nations people and the British Crown served for commercial and military interests. In addition to this, settlements of land became common practice for the British Empire to secure territory from First Nations people.  By the early 19th century, First Nations people “increasingly lost access to hunting grounds and became a dispossessed people on their former lands”, allowing the emerging power of colonial settlers to further increase (AADNC 2013). This emerging power ultimately led to the historical policies aimed at assimilating First Nations and Aboriginal peoples of Canada with European and Christian values of society and culture.

 

Prior to colonization, the role of the Aboriginal woman within her culture was one of authority and respect. This was due in part to her ability to create life and raise her children. Thus maternity was held within culture as a sacred event.  However, colonial policies of the nineteenth century worked to disempower the Aboriginal woman and reimagine her role within society and power structures. This disempowerment and oppression was achieved through disentitling First Nations women from ‘decision-making practices and political governance’ (Emberley 2007). The egalitarian structure of Aboriginal communities held roles of power and leadership without gender discrimination. The Aboriginal woman and Mother challenged the European organization of power who held the ideologies of patriarchy and the Anglo-Saxon body in superiority. Under this social structure, the white and female body was elevated over the Aboriginal woman, thus social disparities existed not only between men and women, but between women themselves.

In the early twentieth century, the childbirth of Aboriginal communities in Canada began to gain attention when high rates of infant and maternal death were being noticed by Colonial settlers. Aboriginal women were blamed for this high mortality rate for their ‘ignorance of healthy child-bearing practices’ (Jasen 1997). Thus, the Canadian government implemented an interventionist policy which required pregnant Aboriginal women to be evacuated to distant hospitals. In the years that have followed, this policy has attempted to assimilate Aboriginal people with mainstream health care practices, which in turn has led to the disregard of Aboriginal traditional childbirth culture (Jasen 1997). Through colonial oppression and the imposition of Western medicine, the traditional practices of health and healing of indigenous people have been disremembered (Sky 2010).

 

In turn, colonization and assimilation processes has caused the esteemed role of the Aboriginal woman and midwife within society to be transformed and weakened. Policies introduced through the twentieth century turned midwifery into an illegal practice. In her writing on ‘Aboriginal Midwifery: A Model for Change’, Amber Sky (2010) describes how the customs of Aboriginal maternal health have been lost through this medical colonization. Under these assimilation policies, the medicalization and exclusion of women during the birthing process has taken place. This medicalization resulted in ‘[redefining] pregnancy as an illness and the practice of midwifery as incompetent’ (Sky 2010). Through centuries of colonization, repercussions of the attempt to medicalize and redefine maternal health care within Aboriginal communities has “had profound spiritual and cultural consequences, which are difficult to quantify” (NAHO 2004).

 

Ultimately, colonization allows the government to obtain reproductive control, thus regulating the population and ontological status of the state. As a result, colonization has led to legacies of health inequities, oppression and discrimination for generations of Aboriginal people. It is possible to identify many of the detriments and repercussions for Aboriginal maternal health care in contemporary society through the impact of early twentieth colonization with the introduction of Western medicine and epistemologies. Therefore, it is important for the contemporary health care system to account for Aboriginal maternal practices. Without doing so, Aboriginals - a people who have been historically discriminated against - will experience only further marginalization and oppression.

 

 

 

References

Aboriginal Affairs and Development in Canada. (2013). First Nations in Canada. Retrieved from https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1307460755710/1307460872523

 

Emberley, J. (2007). Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal: Cultural Practices and Decolonization in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

 

First Nations Health Authority. (2015). Our History, Our Health. Retrieved from http://www.fnha.ca/wellness/our-history-our-health

 

Jasen, P. (1997). Race, Culture, and the Colonization of Childbirth in Northern Canada. The Society for the Social History of Medicine, 3, 383-400.

 

National Aboriginal Health Organisation. (2004). Midwifery and Aboriginal Midwifery in Canada. Retrieved from www.naho.ca/documents/naho/english/.../DP_aboriginal_midwifery.pdf

 

Sky, A. (2010). Aboriginal Midwifery: A Model for Change. Journal of Aboriginal Health, 1, 28-37.