Throughout my courses and the research I did for some of my final assignments I found a deeper understanding about what human rights are as well as how they have been established within western society and more broadly globally. I focused on women and women’s rights and one of the main issues I began to read and look deeper into was the way in which traditionally Indigenous women were treated and how issues and rights of Indigenous women and girls have been pushed aside by colonial forces. As well as how the residual factors of this are influencing the way in which women’s bodies are surveilled within all areas of life. The idea that changing the outcome for Indigenous women requires understanding how patriarchal, colonialist, and capitalist views intersect to create a triple oppression. Changed many of my thoughts in relation to rights and how they have evolved and the fight for rights for women.
It is important to seek understanding into the historical way Indigenous women are traditionally raised, how girls are meant to be treated by their families and the power they hold generationally, to be able to see how the stipping of culture has affected them intergenerationally. I looked at the methods of Indigenous women’s body rights and the ways in which children are raised within traditional practices has changed significantly through colonization and the violent ripping of culture and traditions from Indigenous peoples by invaders. Brianna Theobald provides a depth of information on the Crow Peoples of America. Although all Indigenous tribes and communities throughout Canada and America have different traditions and ways of knowing, many of the child birthing, child rearing, and female reproductive autonomy is in alignment with each other. Women in Indigenous tribes were valued as equals to their male counterparts and revered for their power with giving birth and also with menstruation. Women were given rights to their own body and made decisions with their own health as well as the health of their family. “Crow women maintained a significant degree of sexual and reproductive autonomy, which included their ability to terminate undesired pregnancies” (Theobald 2019, 33). Women’s health was women’s work and was not mediated, restricted, or prohibited by men. Childbirth is a very sacred process for Indigenous women. Crow women specifically had traditions surrounding the pregnancy and birth of the child in order to best protect mother and baby. “Women also turned to kin to guide them through pregnancies. Crow women encouraged expecting mothers to rise early, stay active, and drink plenty of water, injunctions that were common in many Native societies”(Theobald 2019, 34).
This understanding of the view of women’s rights to their own bodies and to be able to nurture themselves and make their own decisions for their pregnancy and family is where traditionally women were stripped of their independence and have been fighting to get it back ever since. This is one of the rights I focused on in depth as women still struggle with maintaining their own rights through pregnancy. This brought me to looking deeper at the western fanaticism of surveilling pregnancy and birth and the medicalization of birth
Robbie Davis-Floyd describes the ideas of rigidity in knowledge systems after they are established. Describing this way of thinking in three categories, naive realism, fundamentalism, and fanaticism. Each with their own level of ignorance, and idealism on what is “truth” to them. The most extreme case and what can be argued has taken hold in the modern medical system with the surveillance of birth and laboring bodies is fanaticism. The idea that “Our way is so right that those who do not adhere to it should be either converted or exterminated” (Davis-Floyd, 2019, p. 40). This hold on the surveillance on pregnant bodies, the fetus, and the process of labour and birth has turned into something that is so ingrained in the social systems within western society. Some births need extra caution and medical interventions but most of this surveillance is standard, negating its necessity or intrusive nature (Cooper, 2022, p.62).
The changing landscape when it comes to birth and body rights for birthing parents is integral. The rights and protections for women have always faultured when it comes to the body as women were deemed property of men for a period of time. Meaning that men get to decide the woman’s fate instead of the autonomy to decide her own.
Looking further into this topic of women’s rights, the evolution of birth practices, and the surveillance of womens bodies has changed my view of human rights because colonial patriarchal forces claim to have everything figured out. However they are dominated by one lens and this dominant view is not ideal when it comes to creating and implementing rights for others. This duality of both dominating and oppressing those minority voices has been present and is still a large part of our current systems. Which is one of the most dangerous and oppressive issues for women globally. Although women in some western countries have gained rights throughout time and emancipation from men as controllers, women’s rights are still continuously in jeopardy.
References
Cooper, M. L. (2022). The Medicalization of Midwifery and Birth. Midwifery Today with
International Midwife, 142, 60–62.
Davis-Floyd, R. (2019). Open and Closed Knowledge Systems, the Four Stages of Cognition,
and the Cultural Management of Birth: Part 1. Journal of Prenatal & Perinatal
Psychology & Health, 34(1), 36–54.
Theobald, B. (2019). Reproduction on the Reservation : Pregnancy, Childbirth, and
Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century. Critical Indigeneities. Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press. https://search-ebscohost-
com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2234300&site=eds-
live&scope=site.