How to include Indigenous culture in birth Work
Birthing Advocacy was the Agency that trained me and soon will certify me to be a full spectrum Doula. I wanted to share some of the life changing information that I was given while learning at BADT.
This Blog is a summary of the article linked below:
3 Ways to Center Indigenous Ways of Being in Birth Work
1. Slow down and center time as infinite over amplifying urgency.
So in your day-to-day life, are you creating space for rest, repair, reflection, grace, curiosity? Are you creating practices that empower your health and wellness needs to be at the forefront of your life?
When we remove the pressures of colonial approaches to existing, we can identify that in most situations, there is enough time to open to receive. To take a breath or a pause. And to curiously explore beyond what is being offered or fears of the unknown. If we are able to embody this as individuals, we are able to not only vocalize this with our clients 1:1, but we are also able to mirror this to everyone we touch in our community.
What we need as society is more spaciousness for possibilities beyond what is being offered. What we need to shift the ways in which birthwork mirrors colonialism is to invite ourselves and those around us to remove the ways in which we oppress each other and ourselves to fit within systems, boxes, or standards that are not true to our own individual molds.
2. Practice consent with self, with clients, and within your community.
We often see consent as a permission. A yes or no. But consent is also a curiosity. It can be granting permission to open up to an exploration of the unknown. In order to open, we must find safety, build trust, and learn to lean into the resources, people, and the options we have available around us that are designed to support us in times of need. But if we are not in practice with self consent, our ability to trust is not sold because we are unable to determine our true yes or no and often may find ourselves in situations where we feel disempowered, disconnected, or exposed to harm.
Because colonialism does not include consent (the very principle of colonizing is to take control over another) on individual levels, we have to remember how to rebuild our relationship with holding our boundaries, truth, and consent to access our personal spaces.
As advocacy-centered doulas and people supporting people through reproductive transitions, a major gift that we can extend to those in our communities is the practice of relearning how to hold consent no matter what space we are in. We can do this passively through our casual conversations and body language and more actively through practicing certain phrases, identifying and speaking our boundaries (and then holding them) and even in the moments that we may not have taken the actions that we can later identify as owning our consent - holding space for grace, forgiveness, and acknowledgement that we did the best we could in that moment and in the next moment we will do better.
3. Honor and create reverence for individuality, culture, and social location.
No birthing person, experience, or journey will be the same, even when they are similar. In the medical industrial complex, it is often the baseline to standardize situations that are similar to attempt to produce an outcome that has been experienced before. This process not only leaves significant space for problematic actions to unfold, but it also devalues the autonomy and individuality that each person deserves in their care.
Sometimes the simplest and most healing things we can do is be fully present with another in ways that allow them to find what feels safe for them to be, express, question, and identify as their own. There will always be cases of urgency that surface, but more often than not, there are more options for honoring, witnessing, hearing, holding, and collaboratively exploring possibilities with another that include their specific and individual needs, desires, and accessibility. When we create and share how we honor our own selves and those around us in reverence for our individuality, culture, and social locations - we give permission to others to not only do the same, but to recreate the norm.
Resource: Birthing Advocacy Doula training 
Slow down
Practice consent with self, client and community
Honor and create reverence individuality, culture, and social location!
