Heeding Warnings from the Canary, the Whale, and the Inuit: A Framework For Analyzing Competing Types of Knowledge About Childbirth

The chapter attached was written in the 1990s when I was working in what we called at that time, "Povungnituk" (now Puvirnituq). 

I had already written another piece in another book called "Gossip" in the North with information that the elders had given to me (with funding to pay them from a Northern Grant process). 

In 1993 I had written another piece with the former mayor of Kinngait (known at the time as Cape Dorset, Baffin Island), Akalayok Qavavao. She had been one of the few women who had the strength to say "no" to the health care system's plan for her evacuation in the 1980s at the time of her baby's birth. She handpicked some elders who assisted her in a traditional birth at home. 

Because Akalayok had had a lot of input in the paper, had read it and approved, she became the principle author, and I became encouraged that Mina Tulugak, Akinisie Qumaluk, and Leah Qinuajuak, the still main and elder midwives would be able to author this next piece with me. But while they had interest and gave me what they thought should be in it, they did not want to engage in writing it, saying they are an oral culture. By the time we had the chapter, "To Bring Back Birth is to Bring Back Life" in the book, Birthing Models on the Human Rights Frontier, the younger generation in Inukjuak and Salluit had become more advanced in wanting to get their history on paper and engaged with Jennie Stonier and myself to do so. My history in the North testifies to a worthwhile changing of the guard on documentation about birth in this regard. I still have miles of video tapes I am trying to figure out something to do with of interviews of elders who used to do births across the North who have since passed away.

There is a tension between traditional and modern definitions of reproductive risk and normalcy. This excerpt describes that tension as it plays out among the Inuit of Northern Canada from the perspective of a community midwife who has worked with the Inuit. She presents an analytical framework which classifies and illuminates the types of logic that compete in most birth settings around the world-a framework useful for showing how some types of logic can be supervalued while others, such as cultural or intuitive logic, are devalued or simply ignored, often at great cost. The forced evacuation of all pregnant Inuit women from Northern Canada for the "privilege" of a hospital birth in the South illustrates the imbalance created when decisions purported to be based on one kind of logic (scientific) are in reality based on another (e.g., legal and clinical), or when any type of logic is given undue authority. After presenting the analytical framework and describing some of the history of Inuit childbirth, the author tells the story of one Inuit settlement's attempt to re-integrate the authoritative knowledge of the community by allowing Inuit midwives to choose their own criteria for balancing the imperatives of each kind of logic in decision-making for birth.