- Bonjour, I'm Rita Karppinen.

Welcome to the 20th season of "Native Report."

- [Narrator] Production for "Native Report" is made possible by grants from the Blandin Foundation, the generous support from viewers like Jack and Sharon Kemp, and viewers like you.

(lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music) - Today we're delving into a deeply significant and empowering aspect of indigenous life, indigenous birth workers.

In many native communities, the art and science of childbirth are deeply rooted in traditions that have been passed down through generations.

In this episode, we'll explore how indigenous birth workers play a crucial role in bridging cultural heritage with modern practices.

From traditional midwifery to community-centered support, these dedicated individuals are not only preserving ancient wisdom, but also innovating to meet the needs of today's families.

Join us as we uncover the powerful stories and rich traditions behind indigenous birth work, and celebrate the resilience and innovation of those who are shaping the future of childbirth in native communities.

- There are 574 federally recognized tribes and quite a bit of diversity, not just to cultural practice but to the timelines, for when everybody else was trying to take over our show.

For most native people, you know, exercising control over your own birthing practices that started to really be directly attacked in the 1800s, and was difficult to reclaim until latter half of the 1900s.

In fact, in many ways, it has been, you know, the very late 1900s, you know, and the beginning of the 2000s when we were able to do this much more effectively.

- [Narrator] Our journey begins in Las Vegas, Nevada, where we met with three inspiring birth workers who not only support families during birth but also emphasize the importance of post-birth care for mothers and babies.

- Heart and Sol Collective is a queer and BIPOC-founded and led organization; a nonprofit in Las Vegas, Nevada.

We address maternal health disparities, particularly in the BIPOC, black, indigenous, person of color communities.

And we provide a lot of services.

Those services range from mental health, doula support, lactation support, childbirth education, parent support groups.

We are home to Human Milk Donation Depot.

We do quite a bit and, you know, ultimately it's to address gaps that we saw in the community.

- Every time I would talk to someone, it just, the same stories kept coming up.

And not the same stories but the same kind of experiences of not feeling supported if we don't honor our traditions that have actually supported women and encouraged, you know, our wellness and wellbeing; a society that doesn't support women and then therefore doesn't support family.

- The systems that the hospitals have, it becomes a, you know, I see you today, and then I have two, three clients and then I have, I don't know, a whole bunch in the same week, and it's just keeps going and going.

And there's really no relationship when the reality is that creating the relationship with the person is what makes the difference.

- So, when we're thinking about the idea of western medicine, western medicine is indigenous medicine.

So, you know, part of it is decolonizing our language.

So we're talking about allopathic medicine.

And when we're thinking about the role of allopathic medicine in birth work, it's incredibly new.

Just thinking about the past 150 years, arguably since the 1920s, which is not that long ago, right?

And so there is a space for medical birth.

There's a necessity, lifesaving interventions that happen.

But ultimately, a lot of the birth work that I and other people are doing is a reclamation of practices.

We're reclaiming knowings and intuitions and remedies and practices that help us be well.

Not just in the moment of pregnancy or birth or postpartum.

They're not separate events.

And in allopathic medicine, they are.

You know, how do we treat the symptom so that it goes away?

How do we treat that with, you know, pharmaceutical medication, for example.

Whereas like approaching it from a decolonized or an indigenous perspective is, how do we look at overall wellness and address somebody in each cycle of their life?

- In America, you know, over 30% of births are happening by cesarean section, when the medical necessity for that is probably 1 to 2% of the time.

And a lot of it has to do with institutions that are worried about being sued if, you know, anything goes sideways.

And if they do a c-section, they can at least say, "We did everything we could."

And so it's an indemnification from liability with our, you know, legal structure in America rather than the needs of the parents and the baby.

And so there's been a call to re-indigenize our birthing practice.

- [Interviewee] When we're at hospitals, it's like, it's numbers and schedules and "Hey, I gotta go to the next patient."

And it's handled like, kind of like a sickness, you know.

- Native people have been taken advantage of by people in positions of government authority, financial authority, you know, educational authority, health authority.

So many times in so many ways.

You know, even the Indian Health Service, which is point of contact for a lot of native moms.

You know, they performed 25,000 tubal obligations on native women without their consent.

One of my mom's best friends had that experience, you know.

Had a C-section.

And it wasn't the bikini cut.

It was a big up and down cut and they put you under.

And it was years later, she was 30 years old and married and trying to have a baby and couldn't.

And goes to the doctor and is like, "I can't get pregnant, what's going on?"

Like, "Oh, don't you know?

You'll never have children.

You know, you had a tubal obligation.

It's not possible."

And she was 16 years old when she gave birth to her first child, a minor child.

And they took away her reproductive ability and freedom and didn't even tell her it had happened, you know?

There's so many things like that.

So some people are like, "I'm out!"

like, you know.

And you can understand why those feelings are there, why the emotional trust bank account starts with a negative balance even before anyone's opened their mouth yet or done anything wrong.

But I think it is bigger and more than that.

So we are reclaiming agency over our own bodies.

We want our bodies back, you know.

We want our culture back, we want our language back.

And this is one of the profound ways that people can do that.

- [Narrator] These birth workers in Las Vegas focus on the holistic needs of new mothers, ensuring they are cared for physically, emotionally, and spiritually in the days and weeks after birth.

- Once we establish that relationship, it really is about family.

So let's get to know your space, your home, your needs, your desires.

I typically see people, you know, two to three times towards the end of their pregnancy.

But it's not uncommon for me to come over and, you know, do dishes or go out and run errands.

And then, of course, I'm there for labor and delivery, and then usually one or two postpartum visits afterwards.

But I tell my clients, "When you're thinking about hiring somebody to support you during that process, would you want them to be family for you later on?"

So I go to, you know, baptisms and first birthdays, and I'm in a lot of my doula babies' lives.

- And I would say that probably like 80% of what my practice is is rooted in traditional care.

And then I really incorporate all the care that I've learned in terms of like preparing baths, like herbal baths.

I guess I have a strong connection with the plants.

That's what I do.

I bring the plants and I give people this opportunity of just experience them; from, you know, getting to be with the plant alive, to be able to prepare like oils, baths, and have like these self-care through this connection.

Part of the work that I do, is understanding like, you know, there's natural things that we can follow.

There's the seasons, there's the sun, there's the moon.

And if we follow those rhythms, then we're in alignment with who we are.

- Bringing babies into the world, all humans from all cultures do that.

But the indigenous customs and practices around that, while internally diverse, are really quite profound.

Even like in our family, I can tell you that, you know, I have nine kids.

I've been in the birthing room a number of times.

And when a baby is coming into the world, we bring a medicine with, and we boil that up into a tea and strain it, and we use that for the baby's first bath.

We take the placentas home, and then they get buried on the north side of a maple tree, which is the tree of life.

And so when we go out there and do this, like I'm out there with kids and my grandkids and they're like making offerings by the tree of life where their placentas are buried.

With five generations in our family doing the same practice, we feel so bonded to one another, to the woods, and to our culture and our ancestors.

- [Narrator] Each step in this journey reminded us that birth is not just a physical process, but a deeply spiritual and cultural experience for indigenous communities.

The birth workers in Las Vegas reminded us that post-birth care is just as critical as the birthing process offering mothers a strong foundation for healing and connection.

- When people think of postpartum, they think like it's all when you birth a child.

And that's not always the case.

It can happen for people who've had abortions or even miscarriages.

A closing ceremony is closing a cycle and honoring what has happened and also starting a new one.

We do a cacao ceremony.

It's not just giving someone a meal and a drink.

Everything serves a purpose and it's intentional.

There's binding, there's hip closing.

That's where the closing of the bones comes from.

Additional services like steams, herbal baths.

So, having people be a part of their own ceremonies.

And, you know, we're not here to save anybody.

We're actually empowering them to see their own strengths.

- [Narrator] These birth workers are not just caretakers, they are cultural keepers, reviving and preserving tradition that honor indigenous ways of bringing life into the world.

- I think something that I've had to grapple with is living in the city, but also us having, you know, our indigenous and native roots; having to grapple those two worlds, you know.

It's like we were removed from our homelands or, you know, through immigration or forced displacement.

A lot of us who are reconnecting are actually trying to reclaim.

It's also reframing what birth work looks like.

Because I think we have this thought that birth work is just about pregnancy, postpartum, and birth.

When in reality it has to do more so about actually sustaining our community, sustaining our families.

You know, growing and tending to a garden, that's birth work.

You know, us feeding our neighbors, that's birth work.

And you don't have to be a mom to receive that.

You know everyone's entitled to love and to be nourished and to be cared for and it's all tied together.

- [Narrator] This episode celebrates the resilience and creativity of indigenous birth workers who are ensuring that traditional knowledge thrives in modern times.

On Madeleine Island, we joined a birth worker as she guided expecting parents through preparation for their first child, rooted in deep cultural traditions.

- My invitation into birth work came pretty naturally, just through life experience and being involved in community; of course, with the caring and birth of my own child, that immense curiosity of what my body was experiencing and what I wanted to know more about.

But beyond that, it was like what kept showing up at my door, like that figurative door, and sometimes literal, the work that I am involved in at this time and will continue to be, which is the revitalization and caring of indigenous knowledge and knowings and teachings, and being a vessel for that.

And honoring like, I may not be the long-term carrier but I'll carry what I need to and do my best to deliver that to where it needs to.

- Today we are spending the day with the land and Keisha and Kevin.

And we were working on a tikinagan.

We're gonna be harvesting some plants to help with birth and just learning about new mosses.

I'm a plant lady, so I love to learn about all kinds of plants.

(chuckling) And Case really helpful in that.

- Harvesting a tree for a cradle, gathering moss for diapers and collecting plants for mother and baby revealed the sacred relationship between nature and new life.

- We're making a tikinagan, cradleboard.

I've never made one before.

And personally I was never, you know, I never used one, I'm not very familiar with them.

But it's something that I want my son to be comfortable with.

As a young adult that I wanna start doing is getting to learn the ways of my people, the ways of how we've done it for so many generations, you know.

And I think it's just super important to keep that going and, yeah, keeping those traditions alive.

- [Narrator] Through every story, we saw how birth reconnects families to their land, their community, and the wisdom of their ancestors.

- An indigenous knowledge, an indigenous birth, is land-based, it's relationship based.

It's beautiful!

- This is a traditional way of taking care of babies.

It is essentially a little house and a structure for a child for the first year and a half of their life.

And it is made out of wood.

All of this wood came from the island.

That was a big part of our time with Maddie and Lindy.

One of the first things that we did is we went and harvested a black ash tree.

They have wood which is really flexible.

It's used for baskets but also for the cradleboard.

And the headboard of the cradleboard is this curved piece here.

And the headboard is made out of black ash.

And we offered tobacco to the tree and asked for it to help with this new child who's coming.

And then we cut down the tree, carried it off the property, and then we split it apart using axes and wedges to break it down its length into the right size sections.

Then we split it again so we had kind of a narrower band.

And then Lindy and I used what's called a waagikomaan or a crooked knife, a traditional Anishinaabe knife, for carving to carve it down into a thin strip.

And then we bent it into the shape which it is today.

- [Interviewee] Just, you know, watching Kevin, the way he's able to split the wood down to perfect sizes, I mean, like... And the work that we're putting in, and just knowing that that cradleboard's gonna, like, I'm gonna look at that cradleboard and reflect on these times, you know.

- The next piece we made is we cut down a cedar tree that already had been blown over by a storm and was dying.

And we split that cedar out and we made the footboard, this bottom piece here.

Carved that and bent that to shape.

And then the whole thing is fitted together and it is lashed up with raw hide.

And the cradleboard is really a significant way to raise babies especially outside in the bush, because the baby is really well-protected.

- [Narrator] From harvesting natural resources to building sacred spaces, we witness the profound respect for life and culture that defines indigenous birth work.

(gentle music) - I'm at my best when I am processing something amidst food and plant medicine, whether it's cultivating and pulling something out of the earth or mixing together a body scrub, it's really all about adornment to self.

Bringing together a group of individuals to support Maddie and Lindy for their new child, and then finding ourselves traveling to the town park, taking a paddle amidst the Madeline Island bog, I just remember paddling to the bog and feeling that innate like enthusiasm of like bringing this young couple to a space that they hadn't yet been.

Like getting to share that with them.

Because I remember the first time I stepped foot on all of that sphagnum moss and thinking like, look at that beauty of abundance.

- [Interviewee] Sphagnum moss is a really unique and special resource in the North.

And for thousands of years, this was a real important part of baby care.

And today, it's still a really valuable resource even though hardly anyone uses it anymore.

This is really diaper material for babies.

And it's really incredible, you know, sphagnum moss is special stuff.

It's super soft, it's super fluffy, and it is actually the most absorbent natural material on earth.

It can hold thousands and thousands of times its own weight in water.

So it draws moisture away from the baby.

Another thing that's really important about the moss is that the moss is antibacterial, antimicrobial and antifungal.

So babies don't ever get diaper rash.

If we think about the moss from a standpoint of our environment, using this with a baby is actually really good because it has almost no environmental footprint.

- The birthing process is such an intimate and beautiful space and it holds actually not just joy and enthusiasm but a deep amount of like grief and fear for many.

In reality, like, that's a space to hold something for.

- I had planned to do like a natural birth, but when I got diagnosed with gestational diabetes, so that kinda threw it for a loop because depending on how the rest of these next five or six weeks go, if I get, you know, put on insulin, my birth will for sure look different.

So that's what makes me a little bit more anxious.

But learning, (clearing throat) like learning how to prepare for that still helps like ease a lot of my anxieties.

Like, there's lots of things that you can do.

And even like prepping for baby, like doing fun stuff like making tikinagan and making us feel prepared is like, kinda like, okay, so it might be hard but like, and it might not be exactly like the way that we planned it but we'll still get through it, you know.

That's all that you can really do.

- It's like creating way for the next leadership and into future generations.

Which I may not be here to observe.

And I'm really so honored to have been able to be a part of her journey thus far.

How do we make the future better?

And now it's like my little like future is gonna be here soon.

Every little thing I'm excited about, even the hard parts.

I'm excited about the hard parts too.

(chuckling) I know it won't be easy all the time but these are like the things you think about like your whole life since you're like a little kid.

(gentle music) - As we dug deep into the profound world of indigenous birth work, from the cultural rituals and holistic care provided by indigenous birth workers to the deep connection between community and family, we've seen how these practices honor both the past and the future.

As we wrap up this episode, we recognize the incredible work of those who continue to uphold and revitalize these essential practices.

Their dedication ensures that the sacred art of birth remains a vibrant and integral part of indigenous communities.

(lively music) - For most of us, chickenpox is a distant memory.

For some of us, that childhood illness can come back much later in life in the form of shingles.

Shingles is a painful, blistering rash, usually in a strip on one side of your body.

Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus.

This is a herpes virus but is not the same as herpes type one and herpes type two that are sexually transmitted.

Varicella is the medical term for chickenpox and zoster is the medical term for shingles.

Both conditions are caused by the same virus.

Once a person has chickenpox, the virus goes dormant and stays in the body.

Most of the time, our immune system keeps the virus from coming back.

But even decades later, the virus can reemerge as shingles.

This happens along the path of a single nerve called the dermatome and is only on one side or the other of the body.

Most commonly, it's on the chest or abdomen but can happen to the eye or the mouth, and that's more serious.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, about one in three people in the US will have shingles in their lifetime.

Shingles affects only people who have been previously exposed to varicella-zoster.

According to the CDC, most people in the US born in 1980 or earlier have had chickenpox.

Chickenpox vaccine has been widely available in the US since 1995.

Shingles most commonly happens in people older than 50.

People over the age of 60 are more likely to experience severe complications.

You can't catch shingles from someone who has shingles, but you can catch chickenpox from someone who has shingles.

They're different illnesses caused by the same virus, but you have to have chickenpox first because shingles is a reactivation of the virus.

The fluid in the shingles blisters has the virus in it.

The rash is only infectious when the blisters are weeping.

The initial red rash is not infectious and the rash is not infectious once the blisters have crusted over.

Why someone gets shingles is not clear, but a weakened immune system is likely involved.

This can be from cancer treatments or medications that decrease immune system function, HIV or simply due to aging or chronic illness.

It is rare but possible to get shingles more than once.

If you have shingles, you should not be around people with decreased immune system function.

Those who are pregnant can transmit the virus to the baby and should limit exposure to anyone with shingles.

Shingles is treatable if you treat it within three days after the rash appears.

Treating it can help prevent complications and help lessen the severity of the infection.

One of the complications of shingles is postherpetic neuralgia.

This means the rash goes away but the pain stays, sometimes for weeks, sometimes permanently.

The Shingrix vaccine should be given after age 50 and is a series of two doses, two to six months apart.

It can prevent shingles from happening or if it does happen, make it less severe.

It also decreases the risk of postherpetic neuralgia.

As always, talk to your healthcare provider.

And remember to call an elder.

They've been waiting for your call.

I'm Dr. Arne Vainio, and this is "Health Matters."

(lively music) - If you missed a show or wanna catch up online, find us at NativeReport.org and don't forget to follow us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram for behind the scene updates.

Drop a comment on social media if you enjoyed the show.

Thank you for spending your time with your friends and neighbors from across Indian Country.

I'm Rita Karppinen.

We'll see you next time on "Native Report."

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