Mothers of the Nations: Indigenous Mothering as Global Resistance, Reclaiming and Recovery

By Lavell Memee. Harvard

The voices of Indigenous women world-wide have long been silenced by colonial oppression and institutions of patriarchal dominance. Recent generations of powerful Indigenous women have begun speaking out so that their positions of respect within their families and communities might be reclaimed. The book explores issues surrounding and impacting Indigenous mothering, family and community in a variety of contexts internationally. The book addresses diverse subjects, including child welfare, Indigenous mothering in curriculum, mothers and traditional foods, intergenerational mothering in the wake of residential schooling, mothering and HIV, urban Indigenous mothering, mothers working the sex trade, adoptive and other mothers, Indigenous midwifery, and more. In addressing these diverse subjects and peoples living in North America, Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Philippines and Oceania, the authors provide a forum to understand the shared interests of Indigenous women across the globe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Demeter Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781926452357

Book preview

Nations

Mothers of the Nations

Indigenous Mothering as Global Resistance, Reclaiming and Recovery

Edited by

D. Memee Lavell-Harvard and Kim Anderson

Copyright 2014 Demeter Press

Individual copyright to their work is retained by the authors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Mothers of the nations : indigenous mothering as global resistance, reclaiming and recovering / edited by D. Memee Lavell-Harvard and Kim Anderson. Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-927335-45-1 (pbk.)

1. Motherhood. 2. Mothers–Social conditions. 3. Indigenous women– Social conditions. I. Anderson, Kim, 1964-, editor II. Lavell-Harvard, D. Memee (Dawn Memee), 1974-, editor

HQ759.M928 2014 306.874’3089 C2014-906022-X

Demeter Press

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Indigenous Mothering Perspectives

D. Memee Lavell-Harvard and Kim Anderson

I: Healthy Beginnings

1 The Meaning of Motherhood Among the Kabyle Berber, Indigenous People of North Africa

Malika Grasshoff/MAKILAM

2 We Practically Lived Off the Land: Generational Changes in Food Acquisition Patterns Among First Nation Mothers and Grandmothers

Hannah Tait Neufeld

3 Risk and Resistance: Creating Maternal Risk Through Imposed Biomedical Safety in the Post-colonial Indigenous Philippines

Paul Kadetz

4 Indigenous Midwifery as an Expression of Sovereignty

Rebeka Tabobondung, Sara Wolfe, Janet Smylie, Laura Senese, and Genevieve Blais

II: Voicing Resilience

5 Stories of Mothers Living with HIV+ in Kibera, a Mega-slum in Sub-Saharan Africa

Samaya Van Tyler

6 Towards the Wellbeing of Aboriginal Mothers and Their Families: You Can’t Mandate Time

Cyndy Baskin and Bela McPherson

7 The Impact of Sexual Violence on Indigenous Motherhood in Guatemala

Kirthi Jayakumar

8 Camera, a Collective, and a Critical Concern: Feminist Research Aimed at Capturing New Images of Aboriginal Motherhood

Mary Anderson

III: Othermothering Spaces and Multiple Moms

9 Storying the Untold: Indigenous Motherhood and Street Sex Work

Sinéad Charbonneau, Robina Thomas, Caitlin Janzen, Jeannine Carrière, Susan Strega and Leslie Brown

10 Motherhood, Policies and Tea

Wendy Proverbs

11 The Power of Ancestral Stories on Mothers & Daughters

Stephanie A. Sellers

12 Rebirth and Renewal: Finding Empowerment through Indigenous Women’s Literature

Jennifer Brant

IV: Building on the Past to Create a Future

13 M¯aori Mothering: Repression, Resistance and Renaissance

Helene Connor—Te Atiawa, Ngati Ruanui iwi (tribes); Ngati Rahiri and Ngati Te Whiti hapu (subtribes)

14 Nimâmâsak: The Legacy of First Nations Women Honouring Mothers and Motherhood

Lorena Fontaine, Lisa Forbes, Wendy McNab, Lisa Murdock and Roberta Stout

15 Indigenous Principles for Single Mothering in a Fragmented World

Dawn Marsden

16 Growing Up: A Dialogue between Kim Anderson and Dawn Memee Lavell-Harvard on Personal and Professional Evolutions in Indigenous Mothering

Kim Anderson and Dawn Memee Lavell-Harvard

About the Contributors

Acknowledgements

For Indigenous mothers around the world, though your arms may be tired from holding up each new generation, and your throats raw from demanding to be heard, know that your efforts have not been in vain. Without your strength, your resilience, and your many sacrifices, we would not be able to maintain our faith in the promise of each new dawn—the hope for a better future.

For our own mothers, Jeannette Corbiere Lavell and Jocelyn Anderson, you have set the standards by which our own lives are measured. Without you we would not be where we are today, as your strength, courage, and sheer persistence in the face of adversity have inspired a belief that together we can overcome most anything.

We would like to thank our children Denia and Rajan, Autumn, Eva and Brianna, for being our greatest teachers. You have modelled patience, as you waited for us to finish just one more page, and you were optimism personified when you actually believed it would be just one more, but most of all you taught us about compassion when you forgave us for turning one more page into another few hours of work. Without you, our homes might be cleaner and our lives less chaotic, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

As we labored to bring forth this volume on Indigenous Mothering (and yes the allusion is intentional) we find ourselves owing a tremendous debt to David Lavell and Jo-Anne Lawless for their ongoing moral and editorial support. You truly went above and beyond the call of duty. Without you, all would be lost.

Introduction

Indigenous Mothering Perspectives

D. MEMEE LAVELL-HARVARD AND KIM ANDERSON

After centuries of persecution and oppression, the simple fact that we are still here, as proud Indigenous mothers, at the heart of our families, communities, and nations, signifies the strength of our resistance. Whether this resistance has been overt, as our sisters engage in constitutional challenges or human rights demonstrations, or covert, as we silently reconnect with the land and teach our children the ways of our ancestors, our efforts have ensured the continued survival of our people.

Our traditions remind us of the power of motherhood. In the Indigenous nations that we (Lavell-Harvard and Anderson) come from, we are taught that the women are the water carriers; they carry the waters of life and, therefore, water represents the female element. It is this belief in one’s own ability—that like the water we can adapt to and eventually overcome anyobstacle—thatinspiresresilienceandpersistenceinthefaceofadversity. Sylvia Maracle (Mohawk) explains:

The other thing to remember about the water is that it is the strongest force on the earth...Even the wind can’t do what the water can do...that is our role in terms of tradition; we have the capacity as women to take those shapes, but also to make those shapes. We recognize that we don’t have the kind of power where you bang your fist on the table, but that we have the power of the water—that sort of every day going against something that ultimately changes the shape of the thing (quoted in Anderson,A Recognition of Being185).

Indeed, like the waves that eventually wear away the rocks on our shores, the strength of our women is subtle but relentless. Such characteristics are unquestionably powerful tools in both the everyday struggles for survival as Indigenous mothers, as well as the larger struggles to challenge, subvert, deconstruct, and eventually break free from the oppressive structures of the racist, sexist, patriarchal society in which we find ourselves.

Although we set out to achieve the impossible, since writing about an ‘Indigenous ideology of motherhood’ is, of course, an exercise in making generalizations about peoples who are extremely diverse (Anderson, Giving Life to the People 761), we have, within this collection, found some common themes within the experiences of Indigenous mothering across the globe. While we can never claim to adequately represent the extremely nuanced diversity of Indigenous maternal experience, Indigenous peoples do share many values, epistemologies, and worldviews, including a belief in the centrality of strong powerful women, as demonstrated by the stories told herein. Unfortunately, as a graduate student recently reminded LavellHarvardwhenshegliblycalledouttheWhiteManwhenaskedtoidentify our greatest enemy, the one thing that we all have in common is a history of resistance; the experiences of colonization, oppression, and marginalization have been all too similar the world over. While this shared experience may determine the field upon which we must choose our battles, it does not define who we are at heart as Indigenous mothers since Indigenous mothering is, in essence, about something much larger, and much older, and much more empowering.

Interestingly, it is our shared experience of exclusion from society that provides a fertile ground for the revitalization and maintenance of empowering mothering practices. In the Canadian context, many of our mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers before us found that an Indian or half-breed woman could never be assimilated enough to be accepted by colonial society (Van Kirk). As a result, the large scale inability (or more likely the conscious refusal) of Indigenous women to adapt to the western institution of motherhood instigated the apprehension of generations of Indigenous children and subsequent placement into residential schools or foster care where they could be isolated from the influence of their backward mothers. Despite the concerted and often brutal efforts of both church and state to erase Indigeneity, it became apparent that our cultures, the very essence of who we are, could neither be overcome, nor beaten out.

Traditionally, our women were respected and valued within our communities. Arising out of our role as mothers, as the givers of life, the role of Indigenous women is to care for and nurture life once it is brought into the world and, by extension, to care for and nurture our nations (Anderson,A Recognition of Being). Referencing the teachings of the Dakota nation, Anderson has explained that according to our traditions Indigenous women not only literally birth the people they are also given a lifetime responsibility to nurture the people:

It’s not just women’s responsibility to the children—we have a responsibility to all of the people. We have to. We are the life givers. We are the life force of the nation. Our responsibility is to everyone; male and female, young or old, because we are that place from which life emanates. And there is nothing greater than that. (Ivy Chaske, quoted in Anderson,A Recognition of Being169)

Bringing forth and nurturing new life is understood to be the basis of the creation of our nation. Thus, unlike western ideologies that denied women decision-making power in the family and positioned them in a role equivalent to a family servant, Indigenous mothers historically had responsibility for the life they created and, by extension, for the whole family and the entire community. With such responsibility came authority and the right to make decisions on behalf of the children, the community and the nation (Anderson, Giving Life to the People 171).

Unfortunately for our people, a fundamental belief in the equality and interdependence of all people, and the resulting egalitarian social structures found in many Indigenous societies, as well as the empowered women therein,wereseenasathreattothepatriarchalorderofthecolonizers. Inthe North American context, Indigenous women not only birthed each new generation, theyweresimultaneouslybearersofacounter-imperialorder, and so their subjugation was critical to the success of the economic, cultural and political colonization of the new world (Smith 15). The very existence of women who were subject to the authority of neither fathers nor husbands had the potential to throw into question the supposed natural order of patriarchal hierarchies and could therefore not be tolerated. As Andrea Smith has argued, the subsequent and continued demonization of Native women can be seen as a strategy of white men to maintain control over white women (21) thereby reinforcing patriarchy, and simultaneously destroying the social structures of Indigenous nations. In Canada and the United States, Eurowestern matrons were sent to Indigenous communities to train the women, in a largely unsuccessful attempt to encourage acceptance of a more acceptable role as docile and subservient housewives and mothers in patriarchal nuclear families (Rutherdale, Jacobs).

Dua, Stevenson, Smith, and Monture-Angus have all described the manywaysinwhichthecolonialimaginationconstructedthemythofthe Indigenous woman in North America in order to denigrate, disempower, and dehumanize her, thereby serving a racist and sexist colonial agenda. According to Dua, departures from the traditional patriarchal nuclear family model were seen as a danger to the social order and fears of miscegenation were intimately mixed with fear of degeneration into so-called primitive patterns of social and family practices in North America (254). Through their missions, the early French colonizers actively worked to replace the functional gender, sexual, and familial relations in Indigenous communities with patriarchal relationships based on monogamy, discipline, and dependency for women. While such attempts were generally resisted (as the dismayed accounts of missionaries attest), they were not without effect, as familial relationships that had served the Indigenous people well since time immemorial were disrupted.

Indeed, even when Indigenous ceremonies, dances, or gatherings were outlawed, and our very survival was dependent upon compliance with the dictates of colonial society, our grandmothers learned how to effectively hide any indicators of adherence to our traditions by actively cultivating the outward appearance of conformity. We have been persecuted for as long as we can remember, not only because we were different in a society with very little tolerancefor diversity, but becausesociety deemed ourdifferences, our heathenlegacies,asathreattothemaintenanceofsocialorder. Itistherefore not surprising that many of us learned at a very young age the importance of deception. Thus began a long tradition of keeping up appearances as a strategic form of resistance, and as a result many of us find ourselves living a double life as we construct and work to maintain a façade of normalcy in order to evade the always vigilant gaze of the larger society.

In retrospect, it was a blessing in disguise that Indigenous women were never completely or effectively assimilated enough to become the kind of wife and mother idealized in western patriarchal society. While non Indigenous women are struggling to break free from the constraints of the patriarchal family and the oppression of motherhood, many of our women have resisted (or been excluded) and, as a result, have always existed outside these particular paradigms. Andrea O’Reilly explains that feminist mothering functions as a counter narrative or oppositional discourse: its meaning is constructed as a negation of patriarchal motherhood (797). In this context, as it is defined in oppositional ways, feminist mothering is still responding to, and therefore structurally and conceptually influenced by, the parameters and definitions of patriarchal mothering. In this manner, the revolutionary power of feminist mothering is hobbled as the terms of the debate and the field of battle are already set by the traditions of patriarchal society. However, generations of resistance and resilience means those Indigenous women do not necessarily face the same dilemma as we work instead to reclaim and revitalize the more empowering cultural beliefs, traditions, and practices of our ancestors.

Indigenous women have had to become practiced at resistance in order to survive in a system that functions globally to subjugate and oppress both Indigenous peoples and women generally, and, therefore, Indigenous womenparticularly. Generationsofstrongwomenhaveprovidedthefoundation for such resistance, for, as Anderson explains, the guidance that women receive from their mothers, aunts and grandmothers, shapes the way they learn to understand themselves and their positions in the world (Giving Life to the People 123). Having had to learn how to resist subjugation and how to survive under the weight of oppression, previous generations of Indigenous mothers have maintained a definition of womanhood and mothering premised upon strength and capability that was distinctly different from the negative images and subservient female role offered by mainstream society. Indeed, according to the definition of womanhood cultivated by Western society, the so-called true woman is selfcontainedwithinhernuclearfamily,withspecificandseparaterolesformen and women and with an economic dependence on men, in such a way that motherhood is one’s true occupation (Snorton 57). In contrast, for Indigenous women, the role of wife and mother did not historically preclude working outside the home and was certainly not defined by dependency.

In land-based communities, given that the men were often away from the community for long periods, women were not only encouraged, but expected to be independent and self-reliant. Women were therefore neither prevented, nor discouraged from learning tasks that were traditionally seen to be men’s work and, moreover, engaging in such work was not seen to take away from one’s femininity (Anderson, Berkin, Brown, Landes). The provision of foodstuffs and resources for the family often relied heavily upon tasks traditionally performed by women, thereby negating any possibility of women being dependent upon their husbands and creating, instead, relationships characterized by interdependence and equality (Anderson, Giving Life to the People). For centuries, strength, independence, and self-reliance have defined our mothers, and interdependent supportive networks of kin have shaped Indigenous motherhood; the legacy of which continues to influence our collective experience today. We see evidence of the power and strength of traditional Indigenous motherhood in the stories told within the chapters of this volume, which we have divided into four sections to demonstrate the many aspects of resistance, reclaiming and recovery.

We begin with a section (I) on Healthy Beginnings; opening with MalikaGrasshoff/MAKILAM’sdescriptionofmotheringpracticesamong the Kabyle, the oldest people of Northern Africa (Chapter 1). Grasshoff starts with the proclamation that the womb of the mother is the source of human life, and, respectively, human civilization. She goes on to demonstrate how Indigenous mothering practices among her people challenge patriarchal norms and even notions like gender complementarity—a theory and practice we work with in other Indigenous contexts. As such, her work encourages us to begin by re-situating our thinking about gender roles and the place of mothering, which, as we have described earlier, is a significant purpose of this book. Hannah Neufeld’s chapter (2) follows by bringing us back to the original mother/beginning (land); she makes the connection between land and mothering bodies. Writing about the disruption to land-based food acquisition and the accompanying traditional knowledge among Saulteaux women in Manitoba, Canada, Neufeld prompts us to reflect on Indigenous approaches to healthy beginnings, which include food intake during pregnancy. This chapter encourages us to see how healthy beginnings involve re-connecting to mother earth.

Healthy beginnings for Indigenous peoples ultimately leads to reclaiming pre-natal, birth and post natal care, the subject of the next two chapters. Kadetz (Chapter 3) writes about colonial biomedical interference with traditional birth attendants (hilots) among Indigenous people in the Philippines. Drawing from interviews with almost 200 Indigenous Filipino women about their experiences with childbirth, he documents a preference to havehilotscontinue their work supporting home delivery. In spite of this,hilotsand home births were sidelined by a 2008 Depart ment of Health Administrative Order requiring in-facility birthing with skilled birth attendants—a vivid demonstration of contemporary colonial policy and the disregard for choice in Indigenous women’s childbirth experiences. As Kadetz asks Can maternal child health policies formulated at international and global levels ever be truly appropriate or safe for Indigenous women by continuing to dictate rather than to listen? Chapter 4, by Tabobondung et al., provides an example of moving forward with the listening, as it describes reclaiming Indigenous centered care and the resurgence of Indigenous midwifery through the establishment of an Indigenous-grounded birth centre in Toronto, Canada. Framed by the personal stories of five women who were involved in the visioning and establishment of the birth centre, this chapter is a heartening example of how the circle comes around, for here we have Indigenous women reclaiming an Indigenous vision of healthy beginnings in a modern urban context.

In Section II, Voicing Resilience, we offer more powerful examples of how Indigenous mothers envision themselves through the oppressive colonial practices that have lead to poverty, poor health, child welfare intervention and sexual violence. This section allows us to hear the voices of Indigenous mothers in Kenya (Van Tyler), Toronto, Canada (Baskin et al.), Guatemala (Jayakumar), and Saskatoon (Anderson). In Van Tyler’s chapter (5), we hear from nine mothers living with HIV/AIDS in the mega slum of Kiberia, Kenya. All widowed, these women must navigate through experiences of being up, feeling down and stress up as they steadfastly work to raise their children without adequate support. The chapter by Baskin et al. (6) highlights the voices of Indigenous women navigating the child welfare system in Toronto, Canada while simultaneously working to address alcohol and drug substance misuse. Baskin and her co-authors conclude that more time is needed to allow the mothers to heal, build partnerships with and between service providers, implement holistic approaches and learn from each other.

Nation building can be a fractious place for mothers, and Jayakumar’s chapter (7) addresses how Indigenous mothers become centered within the battleground. This chapter draws on testimony to depict the sexual violence experienced by Mayan mothers during, and following, the Guatemalan Civil War. The resilience required of these mothers is almost unfathomable; yet they continue to find ways to mother in the face of colonial, state and community violence. In Chapter 8, Anderson begins with a visual study of mothers in Saskatoon, Canada, presenting a heartening show of resilience and self-definition through the beautiful photographic portraits that they shared with the city where they reside.

InsectionIII,featuringOthermotheringSpacesandMultipleMoms, othermomsareanintegralpartofalternatefamiliesoftheheart(Castellano) that urban Indigenous people create in the wake of disruption to extended and land based family systems. The theme of learning from each other, and providing support within a community of mothers also comes through in Chapter 9, where Charbonneau et al. write about Indigenous mothers engaged in street sex work in Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton, and Calgary, Canada. The authors of Chapter 9 begin by making public the disavowed point that most street sex workers are mothers. This mothering work includes not only mothering biological children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and siblings, but mothering each other within communities and taking on the necessary leadership roles for keeping families and nations together.

The chapters by Proverbs and Sellers (10 & 11) depict multiple moms through stories of birth and adoptive mothers. Proverbs envisions a conversation that might have happened between her Kasa-Dena birth mother and her adoptive settler-Canadian mother. Her chapter (10) gives personal expression to the legacy of colonial interference in Indigenous family systems in Canada, and, in particular, residential schooling and the child welfare system, yet shows how the multiple moms who find themselves caught up in these systems can come together around healing. For Sellers (Chapter 11), the healing came through moving from her Jewish birth mother toward adoptive Indigenous grandmothers among her father’s people. Sellers contrasts patriarchal Judeo-Christian creation stories withwomen-centeredcreationstoriesoftheHaudenosauneetocontextualize the impact on mother-daughter relations in her own life. Whereas adoption is usually framed in a negative manner in writing about Indigenous experiences, these two chapters (10 & 11) highlight transformative and healing adoptive practices—it’s about what we adopt. Finally, multiple moms can come in many forms, and Jennifer Brant’s chapter (12) on Finding Empowerment through Indigenous Literature shows us that we always have our Indigenous literary moms standing by when we need them. Brant writes of her experience teaching Indigenous women’s literature to Indigenous mothers at Brock University in southern Ontario, Canada. As one of Brant’s students reported after studying these authors: It’s like coming home.

The final section (IV) of the book, Building on the Past to Create a Future, depicts how Indigenous mothers are drawing from distinct Indige nous histories and traditions to rebuild sacred and powerful mothering experiences and practices. Earlier in this introduction, we wrote about finding common practices and values among Indigenous peoples worldwide, in spite of our distinct cultures and traditions. As Indigenous scholars living in the territory now called Canada, we can see similarities across the globe in Helen Connor’s depiction of M¯aori mothering in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Chapter 13). Connor describes traditional M¯aori mothering practices, colonialinterferenceandthereclaimingoftraditionalmotheringpractices through the M¯aori Renaissance. Having been invaded by the same Anglo-settler culture that came to Canada, it is not surprising to see similarities in colonial policy and its consequences, but there are also similarities in the traditions that pre-date colonial practices, starting with female-centered creation stories, connections between land, new life and spirituality, the significance of extended family and kin-centric societies, and the sacredness of the maternal body. These are the histories and traditions that, as Indigenous mothers worldwide, we share in reclaiming. The chapter by Fontaine et al. (15) then offers a model for reclaiming, and a refreshing lens on the Canadian residential school story. It documents Indigenous mothering recovery among daughters of residential school survivors/mothers. Using the tools of digital storytelling, this new generation of mothers is re-imagining their way out of a colonial legacy and healing themselves and their mothers as part of the process.

In the second last chapter (15), Dawn Marsden offers a provocative exploration of how one might incorporate traditional Indigenous mothering practices in a modern context (and even into space!). She walks the reader through a series of principles that she has applied as an Indigenous single mother living in mostly urban contexts, including spiritual based living, integrating interconnectedness, environment centered thinking, selfsufficiency and self-discovery, recognizing and nurturing gifts, apprenticeship training, self-determination, working with communal food and water, nurturingrelationships, employingfreetradeandgifting, workingwith restorative justice, restoring public rites of passage, employing circle talk, working with consensus, and leadership from below. As editors of the collection, we (Lavell-Harvard and Anderson) then end the book (Chapter 16) with words on our own unique experiences, drawing attention to the attempts of Indigenous mothers to negotiate our positions in contemporary society while engaging in our various and distinct mothering traditions.

As we finish putting this book together, we take heart that these chapters have collectively reinforced that we are not alone in our communities, territories and nations—that there is a global context of resistance, reclaiming, and recovery among Indigenous mothers and their allies. We hope that the book will similarly inspire Indigenous mothers and allies around the world to continue mothering the nations into a healthy future.

WORKS CITED

Anderson, Kim. Giving Life to the People: An Indigenous Ideology of Motherhood. Ed. Andrea O’Reilly. Maternal Theory: Essential Readings. Toronto, ON: Demeter Press, 2007. 761–781. Print.

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Brown, Judith. Economic Organization and the Position of Women Among the Iroquois.Iroquois Women: An Anthology. Ed. Wm. G. Spittal. Oshweken, ON: Iroquois Printing and Craft Supplies, 1990. 151– 187. Print.

Castellano, Marlene Brant. Aboriginal Family Trends: Extended Families, Nuclear Families, Families of the Heart. Ottawa, ON: Vanier Institute, 2002. Print.

Dua, Enakshi. Beyond Diversity: Exploring the Ways in which the Discourse of Race has Shaped the Institution of the Nuclear Family. Scratching the Surface: Canadian Anti-Racist Feminist Thought. Eds.

Enakshi Dua and Angela Robertson. Toronto, ON: Women’s Press, 1999. 237–260. Print.

Jacobs, Margaret. White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880–1940.Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Print.

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Rutherdale, Myra. Mothers of the Empire: Maternal Metaphors in the Northern Canadian Mission Field.Canadian Missionaries, Indigenous Peoples: Representing Religion at Home and Abroad. Eds. Alvyn Austin and Jamie S. Scott. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Print.

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Snorton, Teresa E. The Legacy of the African-American Matriarch: New Perspectives for Pastoral Care. Through the Eyes of Women. Ed. Jeanne Stevenson Moessner. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996. 50–65. Print.

Stevenson, Winona. Colonialism and First Nations Women in Canada. Scratching the surface: Canadian anti-racist feminist thought. Eds. Enakshi Dua and Angela Robertson. Toronto, ON: Women’s Press, 1999. 49–80. Print.

Van Kirk, Sylvia. Colonized lives: The Native Wives and Daughters of Five Founding Families of Victoria. In the Days of our Grandmothers: A Reader in Aboriginal Women’s History in Canada. Eds. Mary Ellen Kelm and Lorna Townsend. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2006. 170–199. Print.

I: Healthy Beginnings

1.

The Meaning of Motherhood Among the Kabyle Berber, Indigenous People of North Africa

MALIKA GRASSHOFF/MAKILAM

The Berbers are known as the oldest people of Northern Africa today still living in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. In Algeria, the two most important groups of the Berbers are the Tuareg—famous all over the world as the People of the Desert (they are nomads)—and the Kabyle, who are sedentary. For a certain time, they were Christians, but later became Muslims, due to the conquest by the Arabs. However, the Berbers of Kabylia in Algeria have retained many of their pre-Islamic customs.

I come from the Kabyle, a Berber tribe in Algeria, and I learned very early about the central position of mothers in this society. The best way of explaining motherhood is by telling you of my own experience in my mother clan. In the first part of my explanation, I outline the basics, the patterns of Kabyle motherhood, and in the second part I present photos illustrating how mothers lived their independent female potency, which is expressed in artistic drawings during the daily chores of women, such as pottery, weaving, and murals.

PART I: THE KABYLE WOMAN AS THE MOTHER OF CHILDREN AND NATURE

The history of every man and every woman has a concrete beginning in the womb of a mother. Still today, the birthing rites by Berbers, the secrets surrounding birth and labor, are exclusively reserved for women alone. As in some societies, the Kabyle prohibit the presence of a man at birth, for the beginning of a new life is something only the women can share together. As the religious historian and philosopher Mircea Eliade wrote: the secret of delivery is a religious experience which can’t be translated into the vocabulary of male experience (Eliade 165).

The womb of the mother is the source of human life, and, respectively, humancivilization. It’sveryimportanttounderstandandtoacceptthis, because, as a mother, a woman can give birth to a new woman and she can also give birth to a man, whereas a