Settler Midwifery: A Colonial Tool in Canada's Reproductive Healthcare System

The land we call Canada is a settler colonial country where reproductive healthcare is used as a mechanism to control, subjugate, and erase Indigenous people and to advance the White settler state. Healthcare providers play an integral role in the healthcare system and contribute to Canada's colonization. In this piece, we critically analyze how settler midwifery is complicit with colonialism in reproductive healthcare by exploring the history of midwifery in Canada, midwifery education, and contemporary settler midwifery.

European settlers omitted the history of Indigenous midwifery in Canada and to justify their erasure, they conceptualized Indigenous Peoples as uncivilized and their birthing practices as substandard. To establish a colonial healthcare system, settler midwives replaced traditional Indigenous birth attendants. When midwifery became regulated, midwives were required to train in formal post-secondary institutions that sustain colonial logics, systems, and practices. Midwifery education programs maintain colonialism by reinforcing medicalized Western practices and sustaining barriers to the growth of Indigenous midwifery. As a result, Western birthing practices are widespread among settler midwives and Indigenous Peoples face barriers to comprehensive and culturally sensitive care. To decolonize Canadian midwifery, we must dismantle stereotypes about Indigenous Peoples and their birthing practices in historical narratives, implement an anti-colonial approach to midwifery education, support Indigenous midwives in returning birth home, and improve the provision of culturally sensitive care.

Settler midwifery in Canada is complicit in colonialism; building anti-colonial alliances can help support Indigenous midwives in leading a decolonial future for reproduction and birthing.