Consolidation of the connection to the land of Innu and Atikamekw women through pregnancy and childbirth.

Abstract

This participatory research focuses on the consolidation of the connection to the land of Innu and Atikamekw women through pregnancy and childbirth. The stories collected have enabled us to better understand these women’s experiences of motherhood, to document their traditional land-based practices and transformations in order to determine how these women have been influenced by colonial standards. In addition to suppressing the role of Indigenous women in the areas of governance within their respective societies, several government interventions have definitively accelerated the sedentarization that goes hand-in-hand with forced hospitalization. This undeniable erosion of the social system associated with life on the land has contributed to hindering the importance of births on the land and has also been instrumental in deep-seated changes in the territoriality of Innu and Atikamekw women. An analysis of participants’ testimonies shows how the shift in practices to assist pregnant women, from the land to the community, and then from the community to the hospital, has led to the loss of midwifery practices and to the acceleration of an imposed biomedical vision of pregnancy. These multiple relocations of birthing environments have precipitated a gradual loss of control that pregnant women could exercise over their deliveries. Nevertheless, the connection of Innu and Atikamekw women to the land has not been lost, it has been transformed. The solutions proposed to revitalize this bond can be summed up by the reintroduction of midwifery practices, the revival of certain ceremonies and rituals, the transmission to younger generations of knowledge about significant places on the land, the preparation of traditional medicines and crafting of objects related to pregnancy and childbirth