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Episode: Reproductive Justice: Birthing The Next 7 Generations

Author: Matika Wilbur, & Temryss Lane
Duration: 01:01:46

Episode Shownotes

Send us a textReproductive Justice: Birthing The Next 7 GenerationsIn this episode, we sit down with Camie Jae Goldhammer (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyaté), BirthKeeper, Reproductive Justice advocate, and founder of Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services, to define, discuss, and explore how Indigenous birthing practices, breastfeeding, and community care intertwines to combat colonial and

capitalist systems of oppression that disproportionately affect Indigenous, Black, and, Brown people. The maternal mortality rate of American Indian and Alaska Natives is 8 times higher than white Americans, with 80% of deaths being preventable. Before Hummingbird was founded, there were no resources in the Pacific Northwest specifically for Native parents and families. Camie shares her own birth journey and how it led to her career serving over 3,000 Native moms and parents.This conversation with Camie is a love letter to Native mommas, parents, and communities as she shares her wisdom as an Indigenous Lactation Consultant and Full Spectrum Doula, having co-created the first and only lactation counselor training created for Native people by Native people. Hummingbird’s mission is to have healthy Indigenous babies being born into healthy Indigenous families being supported by healthy Indigenous communities. Our Indigenous reproductive justice is healing not only the future generations but also the ones that have come before us. This conversation is especially close to our hearts at All My Relations as Matika’s baby #2 is on the way, and resources like Hummingbird Family Services are so crucial to the reclamation of our birthing stories and practices.Tune in for an unforgettable episode on reclaiming Indigenous birthing practices and reproductive justice . +Episode artwork by Ciara Sana & Matika WilburEditing by Teo Shantz Films by Francisco SánchezSupport the showFollow us on Instagam @amrpodcast, or support our work on Patreon. Show notes are published on our website, Allmyrelationspodcast.com. Matika's book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America is available now! T'igwicid and Hyshqe for being on this journey with us.

Full Transcript

00:00:02 Speaker_00
From Every Mother Counts, a national call for birth justice and accountability, they say, quote, racism, not race, is killing black, brown, and indigenous people in our maternity care system.

00:00:14 Speaker_00
In what is now known as the United States, women are more likely to die from complications of pregnancy and birth than in 54 other high resource countries. And most of these deaths are preventable.

00:00:31 Speaker_00
So for the first time ever, a woman is twice as likely to die from pregnancy-related complications as her mother was a generation ago. This burden is not equally shared.

00:00:52 Speaker_01
In the United States, it is urban Native women with the highest maternal mortality rate. In Washington State, where the three of us live, Native women are dying at eight times the rate of white mamas, right?

00:01:04 Speaker_01
Four times the rate of Black and Pacific Islander mamas. So we have by far the highest maternal mortality rate in Washington State. And for most, they just want to survive.

00:01:16 Speaker_00
you know, actually just wanting to live through the experience is for, you know, is the goal, right?

00:01:21 Speaker_00
I mean, I remember when Lino and I were on the way to the hospital to give birth to Alma, I was talking to him about if I die, you know, like if I die today, I want you to stay in Swinomish. I don't want you to leave.

00:01:34 Speaker_00
I want you to stay here so my baby can be raised as an Indian." And he was like, what? Totally. But because of the statistics, I genuinely believed that that might be the day that I died. I can really relate to that feeling of like,

00:01:54 Speaker_00
All right, yeah, okay, the nurse was a bitch, and they did buff cut my stitches, and they wouldn't give me drugs when I wanted them, and there was a lot of things that went wrong, but at least I lived, so I can actually relate to. Yeah. Yeah.

00:02:10 Speaker_00
And the baby lived. And so, and because I have so many, I know so many women who didn't live through birth and or their children didn't. And that's a normal experience in our lives and it shouldn't be, but it is.

00:02:22 Speaker_00
And so there's inequity in birth for Native women and for women of color. Yeah. And so you're doing the work to change that. Trying to, yeah.

00:02:31 Speaker_02
Talking with us today is Cami Goldhammer, who is Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. She is a national leader on topics of racial equity, birth and breastfeeding reclamation, and first food justice for Indigenous families.

00:02:45 Speaker_02
Her work in reclaiming the traditional practice of breastfeeding while actively working to decrease maternal and infant mortality in Native and Pacific Islander communities is profound. Kami has spent 20 years serving urban Native families like mine.

00:03:00 Speaker_02
She was our firstborn's doula, and she is the founder and current executive director of Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services. Kami, we're so glad you're with us today.

00:03:11 Speaker_01
I'm Patsy Washday, our good morning relatives. I'm just really grateful to be here. I'm, yeah, Kami, social worker, lactation consultant, doula, I'm Sissetinwapitano Yahtzee, so Dakota woman, use she, her pronouns.

00:03:25 Speaker_01
And yeah, I love native mamas and their babies and caring for them in any way possible. I always feel like my career is a mixture of a love letter to my parents, to my children, and to the community at large, right?

00:03:40 Speaker_01
Of kind of really recognizing what are some things that I wish that, or resources that I wish my grandparents had access to, my parents had access to, I had access to as a parent.

00:03:52 Speaker_01
And so when I think about the work that I do now, a lot of it is just a result of serving thousands of Native moms over the years. I think I've worked with over 3,000 Native moms.

00:04:06 Speaker_01
as either a therapist or clinical social worker, doula, lactation consultant, you know, various different things. For me, it was really just of a deep love for our families.

00:04:17 Speaker_01
I really see Native moms and children as the foundation of our community, and that's why I've chosen to put all of my effort into that subset of our population.

00:04:27 Speaker_00
Birth injustice is never just about access to equitable health care, but about all these interconnected and intersecting systems of inequities, such as housing, and incarceration, and food apartheid, and child protective services, and unprovoked violence, and environmental injustice.

00:04:44 Speaker_00
And all of these systems are connected. So when we talk about birth justice, we are also talking about systemic oppression.

00:04:53 Speaker_02
Right, these are so intertwined with everything that we are as Indigenous and Native people. We can't talk about birth justice without talking about all the intentional systems of oppression that we've experienced.

00:05:07 Speaker_02
Capitalist extraction, man camps, and the direct impact on missing and murdered Indigenous women. Violence against Native women and Native children at boarding schools.

00:05:19 Speaker_02
intentional separation from culture, languages, stories, teachings, and systems of care. Those are instances they all lead to birth injustice.

00:05:31 Speaker_00
So how do we in our communities define birth justice?

00:05:36 Speaker_02
At Spokane Tribal Network, they say, we believe that Indigenous birth justice is present when Indigenous people honor their ancestors by making the best decisions they can during pregnancy, childbirth, and after the baby arrives to ensure the next generation continues.

00:05:53 Speaker_02
And for me personally, Indigenous birth justice is returning to our bodies, to my body, to my inherent knowing. that we know what's best for ourselves and for our babies.

00:06:04 Speaker_02
It means being empowered by our life ways or remembering them, restoring them, and also our support systems.

00:06:12 Speaker_02
Without our support systems, it's really hard to find that justice that we deserve so that our babies are safe and healthy and that we are empowered to make the decisions for ourselves and for our families.

00:06:25 Speaker_01
You know, the definition that I use and we use at Hummingbird for birth justice is really reproductive justice.

00:06:31 Speaker_01
It is that we have a right to have babies when we want to, we have a right to not have babies when we don't want to, and we have a right to raise those babies in safe, healthy, and culturally attuned environments.

00:06:44 Speaker_01
My friend Red Rock taught me a few years ago one of his teachings, which was and is that the traditional role of a parent was always just to love the child. The rest of the community was really responsible for all the other things.

00:06:58 Speaker_01
You know, kiddo gets in trouble or does something wrong, go talk to uncle. You need to learn how to do something, go talk to grandma, right? There'd be all these different roles that the community plays.

00:07:08 Speaker_01
But as a parent, all we had to do was love our children. And that's something that I really think of when I think of reproductive justice is this is a world in which our only responsibility would be to love our children.

00:07:22 Speaker_00
It's like dreaming of a life pre-colonization. I know. I just get to be all loving. Yeah. It's so true.

00:07:32 Speaker_00
Right, like that reproductive justice is creating systems of care for families and for moms with new babies that allow them to have the space to bond with their baby.

00:07:47 Speaker_01
Absolutely, yep. And that's what I believe will heal historical trauma, right? It is love and attachment that will do that, right? It quite literally changes our genes and those disruptions that happened in the way that

00:08:06 Speaker_01
our attachments and bonds throughout history have been impacted, whether that's by direct colonial systems, by U.S. government policies, Canadian policies, right?

00:08:17 Speaker_01
I mean, so many of the things that we experience as Native people were meant to disrupt the mother-child relationship, even before boarding schools, right? We think about the way that displacement, war, famine, murder, right?

00:08:33 Speaker_01
Like all of those things dismantle the security system that a mom would have. And I say this all the time in our breastfeeding training, like our role as Indigenous lactation counsellors is just to build confidence, right?

00:08:47 Speaker_01
That's all we're doing is building confidence. And the number one ingredient to confidence is security. Right? And that's just something that so many of us don't have. It just disrupts generation after generation.

00:08:59 Speaker_01
And so what we're really wanting to do when we think about reproductive justice and really reclaiming reproductive justice is reclaiming that, you know, that ability to say, I'm your mama and I'm going to be here forever.

00:09:13 Speaker_01
You know, and being able to say that, like, with assurity. And when we have that security, then we can more freely love and attach with our children, which will heal, does heal those past generations.

00:09:26 Speaker_00
So let's get into our conversation with Cami. She's going to tell us a bit about how she came into this work. And I think we should just jump right in. all my relations.

00:09:58 Speaker_01
I got pregnant when I was 28 years old. So, you know, like a little, little older in my family for having a baby, but very intentional about it, which was definitely a privilege. I was really focused as a lot of moms are actually on the birth.

00:10:13 Speaker_01
I didn't think at all about how I would feed my baby. I still think about how funny that is. I didn't really plan to breastfeed, but I also didn't plan to bottle feed.

00:10:22 Speaker_01
And I was really just focused on how's the baby going to get out and that piece of it. I didn't think much about how I would feed my baby at all. I didn't have a strong opinion on breastfeeding, bottle feeding.

00:10:34 Speaker_01
I had never seen anyone breastfeed in my life. It wasn't something anyone in my family did.

00:10:40 Speaker_00
Because they were a bottle of feeding?

00:10:43 Speaker_01
Yeah, everyone was. I'm the oldest grandchild, you know, like on both sides of my family. So I was the first to be born and it was, or actually that's not true, second. My cousin was born three weeks before me.

00:10:54 Speaker_01
So her and I are, we would think we're twins, but you know, like we were, we were the first grand babies. And so yeah, all the babies that came after us, I don't ever remember anyone breastfeeding or anything like that.

00:11:04 Speaker_01
So it wasn't something that I saw. It wasn't like the norm in my life. And then I certainly had no kind of like opinions or didn't know anything about it. So I went into my, I went into my birth.

00:11:17 Speaker_01
I was 42 weeks pregnant, which in the kind of mainstream medical model is too late to be pregnant. So it's kind of like the longest someone can be pregnant.

00:11:27 Speaker_01
And I had a conversation with my midwives about what the next steps were, and that was to induce labor because I was so overdue at that point. So I went to the hospital for an induction, and I ended up with a C-section after 24 hours of labor.

00:11:45 Speaker_01
And now that I know a lot about birth, I can really know that my baby and I just weren't ready. We just weren't ready. Like maybe we just wasn't in a good position. It was not time for her to be born.

00:11:57 Speaker_01
But we were, you know, like we were being advised by medical professionals. And that was just and that was what we had chosen. You know, it was like this was the system we were part of.

00:12:07 Speaker_01
And although I, you know, could advocate for myself to a certain extent, it never crossed my mind to question any of those things.

00:12:15 Speaker_01
But one of the things that happened during my labor when my nurse was kind of hooking me up, you know, putting the IV in, things like that, and she was a elder British woman, and she said to me when I was, you know, when she was hooking everything up is she said, you're gonna breastfeed your baby, right?

00:12:30 Speaker_01
And the way she said it to me was just kind of this like assumption that like, of course I would breastfeed my baby. Right? Like, why wouldn't I? And I was like, yeah, I'll give it a try. And that was, you know, that was that.

00:12:43 Speaker_01
And it quite literally changed my life in so many ways. And I'm so grateful that I decided to do that. And then throughout my induction, she just talked to me about breastfeeding. You know, she talked to me about skin to skin.

00:12:54 Speaker_01
She's like, after your baby's born, we're going to put your baby skin to skin. And that helps them, you know, regulate their temperature and They're better breastfeeders, like all this stuff. And I was like, OK, yeah, that sounds great. Let's do that.

00:13:04 Speaker_01
We eventually ended up with a cesarean, and I was so sad, so sad about a cesarean. I mean, to this day, I don't think I've cried so hard as I did in that OR. Kind of leading up to it, I was so devastated, I guess, by the whole process.

00:13:22 Speaker_01
Part of that goes into kind of like our teachings as Dakota people and how we get our babies here. Because for us as Dakota people, that transition period is where we as the mom, as the birthing person, we step to that other side.

00:13:38 Speaker_01
So we're quite literally straddling the present and the spirit world, right? And that's why it's scary. That's why it's this like scary time period where we're like, I don't want to go there, right? Because you're going into that spirit world.

00:13:56 Speaker_01
And so I was really confused thinking about a cesarean of like, well, how will I know I have my baby? if I don't do this, right? And like, that's why I was scared of it.

00:14:08 Speaker_01
Because I was just like, but how will I know I have my babies, like the right baby? And like, how will my baby have, you know, because like, for me, like the, this was her body, that transition was, you know, that like, piece of going to get her.

00:14:22 Speaker_01
was important and so I didn't understand with a cesarean like how I would do that because transition is an important part of labor for bringing our babies earthside and transition is that time period between active labor and pushing.

00:14:38 Speaker_01
So it's the time period where normally you're like, I want the drugs. I don't want to do this anymore. Give me the drugs. Right? Like, I'm out. This is too much. This is too much. I got there. I got there both times. I changed my mind. Yeah. Right?

00:14:51 Speaker_01
Give me the drugs. Give me the drugs. Yes. Pretty textbook, you know, cesarean, nothing major happened. And I was so happy. Like, I was so happy to have her. And the nurse said, she's like, you have the perfect breast for breastfeeding. And I was like,

00:15:07 Speaker_01
I do. You know, like, and which was so cool because for me, I had very small breasts prior to breastfeeding, you know, and so I hadn't really thought of them as being perfect for much of anything.

00:15:19 Speaker_01
And when she said that, I felt like so empowered and was like, well, let's do this then. I mean, if they're perfect, let's try it out. And, um, Yeah, so my baby Dylan went to nurse, and at that moment, everything got very different for me.

00:15:40 Speaker_01
When Dylan latched onto me, it was dark. We were still in the OR, I'm still being stitched up. There's all these people around us.

00:15:50 Speaker_01
But when she latched on, it was just her and I. I mean, I couldn't see or hear or smell, like, anything going on around me. I could just see, like, her face. And we were, you know, we were nursing and we're looking at each other.

00:16:03 Speaker_01
And then I had this, like, feeling that we were being watched, if that makes sense, and that someone was with us.

00:16:11 Speaker_01
And at that moment, I kind of looked up away from her face, and I saw who I believe were my ancestors, because they looked like me, right? And so they were women that looked like me throughout generations.

00:16:31 Speaker_01
And what I saw on their face were big smiles, right? Like I was just like, oh. And I knew at that moment that I was on that other side, that this is the moment that I had crossed over to retrieve my baby.

00:16:47 Speaker_01
And what I really saw on their faces and felt from them, is just pride and joy and happiness over me really committing to parenting my baby, that we were going to be changing something for our family and really reclaiming new traditions.

00:17:08 Speaker_01
and that that was healing them. And I think that that's something that's really important that we talk a lot about like the next seven generations, right? And what we do impacts the generations that come after us.

00:17:20 Speaker_01
But we don't necessarily look at time as cyclical and that what we are doing is also impacting the generations that come before us.

00:17:30 Speaker_01
And so something as simple as breastfeeding and really reclaiming that, you know, that practice for my family was healing for those that came before us.

00:17:44 Speaker_00
And that also, you know, that that was your retrieval.

00:17:47 Speaker_01
Yes.

00:17:47 Speaker_00
Going to the spirit world. That was the moment that I got my baby.

00:17:52 Speaker_01
Yep. Yep.

00:17:53 Speaker_00
I also want to acknowledge like some people aren't able to breastfeed, you know, and that happens too. And, and I don't want people to feel shame around that, you know, like we all have different bodies and different things happen with our bodies. Yep.

00:18:05 Speaker_00
And so, you know, sometimes it's not possible and that's okay too. But I understand that you breastfed for quite a long time. I breastfed until Alma was almost three. And I got a lot of flack for it.

00:18:18 Speaker_00
You know, like, and my brother would say to me like, put your titties away. That would be like... It's not like that. It's not what this is. And a lot of people, you know, they gave me a really hard time.

00:18:32 Speaker_00
They'd be like, she's too old to be breastfeeding. you know, at that age she could stand and ask for it. She'd be doing cartwheels on top of me and breastfeeding at the same time. But when we stopped breastfeeding we had a we had a boob party. Remember?

00:18:52 Speaker_00
We made a cake with a nipple and we cut the cake. It was like, okay, we're ending breastfeeding. We had a party. It was a celebration. And everybody gave her words that was there, told her about when they stopped breastfeeding.

00:19:03 Speaker_00
And I remember my nephew, Dominic, he goes, okay, you know, Alma, I used to breastfeed and I'm okay. I survived. You know, you're going to be okay. And Alma was like, they're going off to war.

00:19:18 Speaker_01
It's going to be okay, bro. You're going to be okay. You're going to make it.

00:19:21 Speaker_00
And Alma was like, yeah, I'm not breastfeeding anymore. And then we got in bed that night and she goes, mommy. Let's just have a little milk. And she was crying. I was like, OK, baby. I felt so bad.

00:19:33 Speaker_00
I was really done, but I felt really bad for her because she was really mourning.

00:19:39 Speaker_01
It is sad. It's a significant shift in a relationship. Jojo, my youngest, I bribed her. I paid her $100 to stop breastfeeding when she was five. It was so sad. You're like, I'll give you a hundred dollars. I will give you a hundred dollars.

00:19:57 Speaker_01
And she at first said no, but then Dylan, you know, this big sister stepped in and was like, Jojo, do you know what you could buy with a hundred dollars? And that's when Jojo was like, okay, like we'll do it. And she also,

00:20:12 Speaker_01
You know, like, regretted it the next day. She was like, I changed my mind. And I was like, nope, we're, you know, like, we're good. Because I was very done. I had breastfed for over eight and a half years straight. That's a long time. With no break.

00:20:27 Speaker_01
You know, through a pregnancy, two kids. It was a lot. You know, and to go from, yeah, being someone that was like, sure, I'll give it a try, to that was, you know, like, not my plan. But I was over it.

00:20:41 Speaker_01
It started giving me feelings that I was like... The willies? Yeah, I should not... I got the willies too. Yeah, I shouldn't feel this way. The willies.

00:20:51 Speaker_02
But Cammie, you really helped me through that period of time because...

00:20:56 Speaker_02
As someone who's a survivor of sexual assault, when this larger, almost two-year-old would demand and felt entitled to my body and my breasts while I was pregnant, it started triggering these experiences of not having the authority over my own body.

00:21:20 Speaker_02
And I called Cammie just bawling, crying, like, because I was traumatized. I was re-traumatized from breastfeeding. And that's when Cammie was like, OK, yeah, you're done. It's time for you to stop. If you want to be done, this is a good time to stop.

00:21:35 Speaker_01
I do believe that weaning from breastfeeding is a parent-led, mother-led endeavor. I think this is where, like, kind of mainstream white attachment parenting

00:21:46 Speaker_01
gets this really wrong, that we have to just let the kiddo do it as much as they want forever and ever. You can't tell me that my ancestors 300 years ago loved nursing a five-year-old at any time that they wanted to.

00:22:02 Speaker_01
No, I got a buffalo hide to prepare. I can't do that, right? I mean, it was like there was other things to do. I do believe that generally it is going to be a mother-led thing.

00:22:17 Speaker_01
It is an important lesson for children to learn about body autonomy and consent. specifically respecting the body of a woman, right? And thinking about like how early as mothers we kind of like give up that, right?

00:22:38 Speaker_01
And like how are we teaching, you know, like what are we teaching to the kiddos?

00:22:42 Speaker_02
He'd say, mama milk, mama milk, and he'd do his hands, his sign language. And then I'd say, sorry, son, we sent a balloon away. And we said, we have to send the boobie mama milk back to the moon so the new baby's being born can have milk again.

00:22:55 Speaker_02
So we did this whole ceremony. So he knew, he was old enough to know, he'd say, mama milk, mama milk. And I'd say, whose body, son? And he'd go, mama's. So it was the first lesson on consent.

00:23:08 Speaker_01
And we can still love them through it, right? I'm sorry you're sad. I can comfort you in other ways. And that's the shift, right? And that's a shift in a relationship. But it lays that foundation that never goes away.

00:23:23 Speaker_01
And that's what you have to kind of remember with it, right? Love and attachment and bond it is unique.

00:23:29 Speaker_02
So this clear path that you were on message from your ancestors the healing journey Your mom now and tell us then what led to the lactation. Yeah.

00:23:40 Speaker_01
Yeah So I I was returning back to work and I really didn't I didn't know how to pump I didn't have an office I worked out of my car and family's homes, you know, and so I was really like I

00:23:50 Speaker_01
What's this going to look like for me as a social worker working in the field and continuing to lactate, you know, and pump for my baby?

00:23:59 Speaker_01
So someone had suggested I go to a La Leche League meeting, which is like a peer-to-peer breastfeeding support group that has been around for a long time, since the 50s. I walked in and it was a whole bunch of white ladies.

00:24:13 Speaker_01
And I remember seeing someone who was literally standing up and nursing her four-year-old, who was standing up too. The four-year-old was standing up. Yeah. And she was too. I mean, I was like, what? I was literally like, what in the white lady?

00:24:26 Speaker_01
Your future. I had never seen anything like it. You've got to keep in mind, I've never seen breastfeeding before. I've been breastfeeding for like two months now. And they're like, how can we help you?

00:24:37 Speaker_01
And I said, I'm returning to work next week, and I don't have a pump. I'm hoping you can help me. And literally, their response was like, well, do you have to return to work? She's so young. She's so little. And I was like, wait, what?

00:24:53 Speaker_01
Obviously, I have to return to work. I would not be returning to work if I didn't have to return to work. And so I just went home from that feeling. And they didn't help me.

00:25:03 Speaker_01
They didn't know how to pump, because they're all stay-at-home moms and all this stuff. So I went home and just started Googling Native American breastfeeding support, Indian mom breastfeeding. I tried all these different Google combos.

00:25:20 Speaker_01
And everything I got was photos from the 1800s of someone you know, like a native mom breastfeeding, there was nothing current. And I was so like, this is it. Like, there's nothing for us.

00:25:33 Speaker_01
And that's when I was like, well, I guess I gotta start something. And so that's how I really got on that pathway. And part of that was becoming a lactation consultant. Learning more about kind of the field of lactation, it was exclusively white women.

00:25:46 Speaker_01
And I'm like learning from all these white ladies, you know, as far as like how to become a lactation consultant. All of my training, nearly all of the families that they were serving were exclusively white.

00:25:56 Speaker_01
And I was really kind of like taking this step back of looking at like, okay, so native babies are dying at extremely high rates of SIDS specifically, right? It's like one of the number one causes of death.

00:26:10 Speaker_01
Native babies are two to three times more likely to die of SIDS than white babies. Sudden infant death. Now we call it SUID or sudden unexplained infant death.

00:26:19 Speaker_01
and babies that aren't breastfed are about 50 to 70 percent more likely to die of SIDS than babies who are breastfed. Breastfeeding is extremely protective against SUID.

00:26:30 Speaker_00
Why?

00:26:31 Speaker_01
So there's a couple of different reasons why. One is just the general overall health and well-being of a baby. Breastfeeding does a lot of incredible things. Where it really shines is against respiratory illnesses and things like that.

00:26:45 Speaker_01
And we're finding that a lot of babies that are dying of SIDS have kind of like underlying respiratory infections or illnesses and then that paired with like being a certain age range.

00:26:54 Speaker_01
I mean, there's kind of like other compounding risk factors, but that's something that they see. And breastfed babies just don't have high rates of respiratory infections. When they do get sick, it's not as severe and they get better a lot faster.

00:27:07 Speaker_01
The milk is medicine. They're literally passing antibodies through the milk to the baby. The other piece is breastfed babies wake up a lot.

00:27:16 Speaker_01
And this is one of those things that I tell parents, because it's usually one of the hardest things about having a baby, is that their babies wake up often, right? Yes, they do. Yes, they do.

00:27:27 Speaker_01
And what I always remind parents after validating how tired you are, and I'm so sorry, I know it's hard, but reminding parents that a baby waking up is a life-saving skill.

00:27:40 Speaker_01
Waking up is a life-saving skill for a baby and if we think about kind of like going back to our traditional practices too and I go all over Indian country and find that most of us have very similar teachings around this stuff as we you know believe that our babies are connected to the star world or spirit world or the other you know like

00:27:57 Speaker_01
depending on your culture, for a while. Some babies, it's, you know, until their soft spot closes, right? Like, that's that portal for us Dakota people.

00:28:06 Speaker_01
That's, you know, as long as that soft spot is open, that baby is connected to the other side for a Navajo baby until they laugh for the first time, right? Like, those are things that are saying, like, this baby is here permanently.

00:28:19 Speaker_01
And a lot of times our teachings tell us that when we sleep, that's when we get to travel, right? That's when we get to go to the spirit world.

00:28:28 Speaker_01
And so for babies, as beings that are still very much connected to that other side, we need them to come back. we need them to wake up, right?

00:28:39 Speaker_01
And breast milk is so easily digested that they wake up an hour after eating, they wake up 45 minutes after eating, they wake up two hours after eating, right?

00:28:50 Speaker_01
I mean, it's like, that's all very normal and that's exactly the way it's supposed to be, right? Babies sleeping for a very long time. is not the biological norm.

00:29:01 Speaker_01
So that's one of the other ways that we see breastfeeding is protective is that these babies wake up often, you know, and they're ready to eat because this milk is so perfectly designed for their digestive system.

00:29:13 Speaker_00
Can I just say real quick, lactation consultants, you know, get a bad rap in Hollywood. They do, yes.

00:29:18 Speaker_00
You know, like the stereotype of a lactation consultant is like this woman comes in, she's got an industrial sized pump, she grabs your baby, she grabs your boobs, she like punches it a bit and then gives you some herbs and leaves you or something.

00:29:28 Speaker_00
Yes. You know, so can you just define what a lactation consultant does? Absolutely. And there are, there are not great lactation consultants.

00:29:36 Speaker_02
Before you define what they do, I had no experience with lactation consultant until Kami became our doula and lactation consultant. And there was the pregnancy part of it, which I'll let you explain.

00:29:50 Speaker_02
But then when my baby came and he, I was fortunate despite epidural and other interventions, episiotomy and all, you know, 38 hours later. My baby, I was birthed out of my vagina, right? And Akilah came crawling up my belly, like crawling.

00:30:11 Speaker_02
And I just remember Cami over my shoulder and she waited for like, you know, skin to skin crying, hi, I said hi. And she went, I just remember her hands gently going, grabbed me like kind of going, okay, he's ready to nurse.

00:30:25 Speaker_01
And I just remember going like, He is? Well, Kim, who's my best friend, who I teach the Indigenous Lactation Counselor training with, the first time I heard her describe it this way, and I was like, yes, that's it.

00:30:41 Speaker_01
She really says she's Navajo, and so she also holds the belief that these babies come from what they call the holy people, right? And she's like, I really see myself that the baby is is this little star person.

00:30:56 Speaker_01
They're this spiritual being and I'm just there to like guide them.

00:31:02 Speaker_01
You know, and I think that's a big difference between like what we do as indigenous lactation counselors, as indigenous doulas, but as like an indigenous lactation consultant versus like wait, you know, like what you're kind of talking about Matika with kind of like the mainstream white, you know, like lactation consultant is

00:31:21 Speaker_01
we really follow the baby's lead. It's really important that we let, do everything on their terms. And that is going to help to establish a stronger and better attachment later on too. And create a better breastfeeder.

00:31:39 Speaker_01
It helps to establish a better milk supply.

00:31:43 Speaker_00
And breastfeeding is so hard.

00:31:45 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:31:45 Speaker_00
You know, I mean, it can be so hard. Well, yes, I remember it being like just,

00:31:52 Speaker_00
I remember the third day after the baby came out, our producer, Jonathan, his wife, Jade, she said, I sent you something in the mail and I opened it up and there was nipple cream and the stuff for the cold compresses and milk bars, just like a breastfeeding care package.

00:32:14 Speaker_00
And I opened it and I just bawled because I didn't have any of those things And I was, I, you know, that morning was sitting in bed with Alma, this newborn, and I was, I was just bawling trying to breastfeed because it hurt so bad.

00:32:30 Speaker_00
And I could not understand how I was supposed to keep doing this. It was, it was, my nipples were chapped, they were bleeding. I was, it was like, it was fucking terrifying. Yeah. You know, so I think,

00:32:44 Speaker_00
you know it should it seems like it should be normalized but the lactation consultant that I saw at the hospital was like mostly concerned about the latch like we went in and she's like okay it's working you know and then they sent me home but I felt like I needed somebody to help me figure that shit out because it was if I had seen you on day three that would have been unacceptable for me

00:33:04 Speaker_01
And it would have been a sign that something is going on and we need to fix it because it's not sustainable.

00:33:12 Speaker_01
One of the things that is important when thinking about breastfeeding is that, and this always really pisses people off, is that breastfeeding shouldn't hurt. So breastfeeding shouldn't hurt. If breastfeeding hurts, something's wrong, right?

00:33:27 Speaker_01
And this is where like those cultural, like having the aunties that know about breastfeeding, right? Like those kinds of things make a huge difference when we look at communities that have maintained that tradition of breastfeeding. So, you know.

00:33:42 Speaker_01
generally indigenous cultures around the world that have been untouched by kind of like modern civilization, right? Where 100% of people breastfeed. Those mamas have all the same fears that we have here. Their nipples hurt.

00:33:56 Speaker_01
They worry about their milk supply. They get infections. They go through all the exact same experiences. But what they have that we don't have is grandmothers that breastfed. Because breastfeeding is a cultural practice.

00:34:08 Speaker_01
It is ingrained in everything they do. And for us, we don't have that largely here, right? And so when someone's going through what you're describing, a ton of pain, damage, all of that, right?

00:34:23 Speaker_01
And then we have lots of other moms, because 80% of moms experience pain with breastfeeding. So this is the difference between something that's common, but not normal. It is our body's way of saying this is wrong, right? And it is,

00:34:37 Speaker_01
always the baby's fault. So it is their latch that does it. The baby is the one, like almost all breastfeeding problems are a baby's fault. Those babies are the worst. And so as lactation consultants or lactation counselors, That's for us to fix.

00:34:58 Speaker_01
And most breastfeeding problems are pretty easy. Let's get the baby nipple to nose, wider mouth, adjust them a little a couple inches to the left or a couple inches to the right. But it is really important that the baby has a good latch.

00:35:15 Speaker_01
And if they don't, our body knows because it hurts, right? And pain is our body's way. Any other pain we would experience at that level, right?

00:35:25 Speaker_01
I always think about, like, can you imagine men with, like, open wounds on their nipples and, like, all this stuff? And, you know, people saying, like, oh, just give it six weeks. Just keep doing it. Like, a man would never accept that.

00:35:42 Speaker_01
as a reasonable recommendation, right? Like, no, you'd be like, they'd be like, wait, what? Right? And, but for some reason, when it comes to moms, that's like, okay in our society. And that I do not agree with.

00:36:20 Speaker_00
Colonization disrupted the cultural practice of parenting. For generations, our children were taken away from us, sent to boarding schools. And the result for many of us was a disconnect from our ancestral parenting practices.

00:36:37 Speaker_00
So a huge part of the work of decolonization is recentering our community-based value systems and really rekindling those relationships. It's overcoming the shame of not knowing and instead building systems of interconnectedness.

00:36:58 Speaker_00
Our communities used to have an abundance of birth workers. Now we're often on our own when we're trying to navigate these systems of new parenthood and trying to figure out really what it means to be a mother and how to mother our children.

00:37:17 Speaker_01
It's so true, and it's like our mothering has been really, really, really disruptive. And if we think about mothering as a cultural practice, I think one of the biggest myths we can tell people or let people believe is that mothering is natural.

00:37:31 Speaker_01
It is absolutely not natural. We grow up being mothered or not being mothered. We learn this along the way. And then when we become parents or become moms ourselves, yes, there's this connection to the baby, right?

00:37:48 Speaker_01
But knowing what to do, how to do it, that is learned, right? So I describe mothering a lot like language. It's natural, but it's learned. We learn it by being mothered, by not being mothered. by doing it ourselves.

00:38:02 Speaker_01
And we also see it in like, you know, we just had a little baby gorilla born here in Washington State at the Woodland Park Zoo.

00:38:08 Speaker_01
And that baby was born and she was shipped off to be raised by humans elsewhere because gorillas in captivity, they don't know how to mother. They don't see it. They don't, you know, get to experience it. And so when their babies are born, they're like,

00:38:24 Speaker_01
What are you? Right? And so, you know, where if they were in their natural habitat, they would be surrounded by other mothering gorillas. It's so social and they're nursing each other's babies and they're connecting. It's part of their culture.

00:38:39 Speaker_01
But when we, when you remove a, you know, a gorilla from her community and place her in captivity where she never sees a baby, never sees any one mother, she doesn't know what to do. Right?

00:38:52 Speaker_01
And so that's where I really started to look at the work that I was doing and looking at, OK, if breastfeeding is a cultural practice, here I am, a Native mom who's never seen anyone breastfeed, never got to experience this.

00:39:08 Speaker_01
I'm seeing the infant mortality rates, our low breastfeeding rates, and really recognizing that me, as a Native woman, am quite literally needing to pay white ladies to get this information back.

00:39:20 Speaker_01
you know, when it was really something that I should have been, I should have been given, right? I should have been, I should have been raised in it. I should have seen it growing up. This is ours.

00:39:30 Speaker_01
This is an important part of like our cultural reclamation and really lays like this foundation for all, you know, all of the cultural practices that we have gone on to reclaim.

00:39:41 Speaker_00
Oh, I want to cry. Yeah. Yeah.

00:39:49 Speaker_02
In captivity? Captive to the cap?

00:39:54 Speaker_01
Do you know what? There's a really cool story, though, like a really cool story that came out of Arizona, a zoo in Arizona in the 1980s. And I know this is true, because I know one of the moms that did it. They had a gorilla mama who was pregnant.

00:40:09 Speaker_01
And so they were like, how can we get this mama gorilla to breastfeed? And so they got her a doll. They were trying to like, you know, teach different things around how to bond and attach with the baby, and it just didn't work.

00:40:20 Speaker_01
And then someone, I say some genius zookeeper, was like, what if we had breastfeeding moms come and nurse in front of the gorilla? And they had breastfeeding moms come and nurse their baby, sit in the window, and nurse their babies.

00:40:35 Speaker_01
And after a few days, the mama grabbed her baby, copied the human moms, And that baby did exactly what a three, four day old baby would do when placed skin to skin to a lactating breast, right? Is the baby latched on and she went on to nurse her baby.

00:40:52 Speaker_01
And that was, I mean, it's just like the coolest story to think about like how we can reclaim that, right? And that it is like by seeing it, by experiencing it, not so much of like the work we do now at Hummingbird and just like really normalizing

00:41:09 Speaker_01
I mean you guys know like your whole crew like you guys all breastfeed, right? Like everyone it's just like the norm and that really changed, you know, it just changes the trajectory of a community.

00:41:21 Speaker_00
Yeah, and the kinship it creates. You know, because Temaris, when Stephanie had her baby and her milk hadn't come in, Temaris sent a bunch of milk for Punchy. It was an overproducer.

00:41:38 Speaker_00
And it was just kind of the love that Stephanie and Ab have for Temaris now.

00:41:44 Speaker_02
And me for them and your family. I'm like, I feel really bonded to your family forever. Absolutely.

00:41:50 Speaker_00
It plays like this crucial role in the strengthening of community. That is, you know, something you don't often think about is as a disruptor, like how breastfeeding plays into kinship. Absolutely. But it's definitely a part of relationality.

00:42:05 Speaker_01
Absolutely.

00:42:06 Speaker_00
A huge part of the foundation for a kinship structure.

00:42:10 Speaker_01
Yeah. And there's always been enough milk. There's always been enough milk. There's always been moms that couldn't press feed. Always. You know, like, for whatever reason. But there was always enough milk, right?

00:42:22 Speaker_01
But what capitalism did is it made, you know, it made us, created that independence, right? That we're no longer connected to each other in that way.

00:42:31 Speaker_01
And so I think of, like, how important actions like donating milk or nursing another baby, you know, things like that really does

00:42:39 Speaker_02
dismantle colonization right it's saying like we don't we don't need you right moving from scarcity back to abundance absolutely like this idea yes there's abundance of milk there's abundance of love yes yes I feel like that's what you get to do every day through hummingbird yeah

00:42:59 Speaker_01
Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services. Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, I, with my breastfeeding work, I started learning more about birth, really recognizing that, you know, birth and breastfeeding are very much connected.

00:43:14 Speaker_01
It is just part of, you know, part of the process. And, and so that got me more interested in kind of like, birth experiences, dueling, things like that.

00:43:26 Speaker_01
A lot of people in community at the time saying, like, it's time for something for Native moms and babies. You know, we really don't have that in the Seattle area.

00:43:34 Speaker_01
We have some incredible Native nonprofits, but none of them specifically and solely serve Native moms and babies. And that's what Hummingbird does.

00:43:44 Speaker_01
Our mission is healthy Indigenous babies born into healthy Indigenous families supported by healthy Indigenous communities. And for us, we truly believe the best thing for Native children is to love on their Native mamas. And that's what we do.

00:43:58 Speaker_01
It's really special work, and we have a lot of families that don't know what a doula is. We'll get on calls with families, and they're like, they don't even know what a doula is, right? They got a referral.

00:44:09 Speaker_01
And so the way I often describe a doula is I just say, we're fulfilling the traditional role of an auntie. That's it. And in Dakota, the word we would use for midwife or doula is Taween, so it's auntie. It's the same word, right?

00:44:27 Speaker_01
And that's what it is because kind of, I think Temaris, earlier you were talking about kind of like traditionally we would have had that village, right? We would have had been surrounded by the aunties, the grandmas, the women.

00:44:38 Speaker_01
We would have never done anything alone. And now, there's lots of reasons why we might not have that, right? Or what we do have might not be exactly what we need for a variety of reasons.

00:44:55 Speaker_01
And so what we're really wanting to do as birth keepers at Hummingbird is really just provide that protection around that space. And really, you know, we love Native moms, like, so, so deeply.

00:45:13 Speaker_01
And for me, I think, as Native moms, like, we deserve the best, right? We deserve excellence. And anything short of that, to me, is unacceptable. But I think for so many of us, we're not necessarily raised being told that.

00:45:29 Speaker_01
And I think for so many women, when they go in to get pregnant, their bar is so low for what the experience should be like.

00:45:39 Speaker_00
And do you think that, in your experience in the medical system, that the medical system has an agenda in their birthing practices? Yeah.

00:45:46 Speaker_01
I mean, I do think that, yes, the system absolutely has an agenda. Individual providers might not, right? But when you work within a system, you're kind of like... Beholden to it. Yeah, beholden to that system, right?

00:46:00 Speaker_01
You might go in thinking, I'm going to be different, right? Like that kind of thing. But eventually, the cognitive dissonance gets the best of you. And you kind of have to make a decision of like, do I jump in and join the system or do I get out?

00:46:15 Speaker_01
And as someone who's been to hundreds of births, I mean, I've seen hundreds of births.

00:46:19 Speaker_00
Have you really?

00:46:20 Speaker_01
Yeah, I've probably been to close. I mean, I've lost count, but probably close to 300, you know, 300 births. And I've worked with over 3000 dyads when it comes to breastfeeding, you know, like over the years. So it's a lot of family.

00:46:35 Speaker_01
Like, a lot of families. And I've always said, like, I have a great privilege of not being technically a medical provider, right?

00:46:42 Speaker_01
Like, it's really easy for me to stand on my soapbox and say all the things that I think doctors do wrong or hospitals do wrong and things like that when I don't work within that system, right?

00:46:53 Speaker_01
And I absolutely can recognize, like, the privilege I have as someone who works outside of it. And there's a reason I work outside of it. But it's important that we have it. And when it comes to kind of, like,

00:47:05 Speaker_01
supporting Native mamas, like in our work at Hummingbird, right? An overwhelming majority of the families we serve are being cared for within these systems. What we do as doulas is really kind of provide some of those protections around it.

00:47:20 Speaker_02
You give an alternative vision when we've been so conditioned to saying, well, doctor's orders, I guess this is what's best. Why don't you give us some examples? Induction. As a perfect example, your babies took 42 weeks. I was 38 for my first birth.

00:47:38 Speaker_02
I turned 41 five days before my second birth. And because I was over the age of 40, the pressure that I felt to induce

00:47:54 Speaker_02
Before reaching 40 weeks or even like okay now I and I just held firm, but it was really hard Well, I remember we talked about it, you know, we kind of like talked through like let's get a few more days, right?

00:48:08 Speaker_01
Like let's just get a few more days and like what and I was really like, what do you want?

00:48:13 Speaker_02
I wanted to give my baby a Enough time and because the kilo was 40 weeks and four days, right?

00:48:21 Speaker_02
I was like, I just want to get to 40 weeks in four days and then I'll revisit this decision But I need to get there because that's when it guess when my baby came Yes without an induction without an induction but it took me having to be able to having Kami and Vanessa and then she a Jamaican midwife that I was so blessed to to work with and

00:48:43 Speaker_02
to be a thought partner in that and not push a medical agenda.

00:48:48 Speaker_01
From the medical provider perspective, you were being seen as a 41-year-old mom and not Temris. Yes. Right? And that we had a healthy mom and a healthy baby. No signs of anything going wrong. And a history. Right?

00:49:05 Speaker_01
And a history of going a few days post dates, which is totally normal. I mean, even 40 weeks, four days is early for a first timer, even. And you knew that history, and you knew your body.

00:49:17 Speaker_01
And that's one of the amazing things of dueling for elite athletes. athletes and dancers and stuff, it's like you know your body so incredibly well. And that can be a really, really, really disempowering situation.

00:49:34 Speaker_01
And the way it's framed makes you sound like the asshole if you say no thank you. Right? Or you're a bad mom. It's like, well, you're going to die. You're putting your baby at risk. Right? And it's just one that's not true. Right?

00:49:49 Speaker_01
That is always a possibility. But we can never say that for certain. And let's look at the whole picture. And that is one of the things that I think the mainstream medical model doesn't allow for. We have really moved away from looking at,

00:50:07 Speaker_01
birthing people as individuals, and that's the thing that I think we can do as doulas. And I say it all the time, no, no, no, we're special.

00:50:15 Speaker_01
I get that you are saying this, that, and the other, but this mom's special, and so we're gonna do something different, and I believe that.

00:50:25 Speaker_00
That's really profound.

00:50:26 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:50:27 Speaker_00
What are some ways that moms, pregnant moms, families that are getting ready to have a baby, some ways that you suggest taking care of themselves or advocating for themselves?

00:50:37 Speaker_01
I really wish like especially native moms knew that they don't have to just do what they're told. But at the same time, I really want to recognize that we are heavily impacted by historical trauma and kind of like fears of losing our kids.

00:50:52 Speaker_01
Going into a hospital can be a very, very scary place for someone, right? And like our goal often is to get out of there alive and get out of there with my child. And so it can be really scary to kind of go up against the system.

00:51:06 Speaker_01
I feel really strongly that I don't think that moms should have to be the ones advocating for themselves. Generally, you're in no position to do that. Your brain is mush. You're needing to travel to the other side and back, right?

00:51:21 Speaker_00
You're excruciating pain. You're excruciating pain literally. You think they're happening to your body.

00:51:25 Speaker_01
Yeah, like oxytocin is just flowing. You've got to think about pooping after you have given birth.

00:51:31 Speaker_00
That's all I can think about. It was so scary. It's so scary. I was like, oh my God. I can't talk about anything. I don't care.

00:51:38 Speaker_02
I gotta think about it.

00:51:40 Speaker_00
I hope I don't poop. I gotta think about poop. It's so true. When Lino and I did the birth training, they told him it was a bunch of white women. They told him when women are giving birth, they have a really hard time seeing around themselves.

00:51:57 Speaker_00
They can't hear things that are far away. And they can't see things that are far away. He really took that to heart. Because what? Because he would come and just like put his nose like to my nose and he'd be like, are you thirsty?

00:52:19 Speaker_00
You're like, what are you doing? And then after I had the baby even, for like months afterwards he'd come up and be like, I can hear you. He's like, but can you see me? His face, close up, is like, do you need water? That's so cute though. Oh my god.

00:52:42 Speaker_02
You're so funny. I mean, to that point, you're there also for our partners. Yeah. And boy, do they need you sometimes more than we do. Yeah.

00:52:52 Speaker_01
You know? It is. It's a lot. Yeah. I mean, we definitely try and hold space. I think so many times partners have No idea what's going on.

00:53:02 Speaker_00
Or from one birth to the next is totally different. Absolutely. I think we have a lot to learn from one another. All the books we read, that's where I go to. I go to scholarship. Where's the scholarship on this? And I find this deep lack of resource.

00:53:16 Speaker_00
And I don't want to read a thesis. I want to go to Barnes and Noble. And I find that in itself, this deep injustice, just the lack of information.

00:53:29 Speaker_01
For me, what I want people to know when they get pregnant is, one, you deserve the world. And you deserve to have an incredible experience.

00:53:40 Speaker_01
I also really want people to know, and I know I've shared this with Temaris before, is that this baby chose you. Which is one of my favorite teachings that we have as Dakota people, is that this baby looks down from the stars and picks you.

00:53:57 Speaker_01
you, right? And I think that that's something like so many native mamas, like people are pregnant and they're like often kind of wondering, like, I'm not, I'm not good enough. This baby could be better off somewhere else.

00:54:08 Speaker_01
I don't, I'm not the right age. I don't have a job. I don't have the security, right? Like that kind of stuff. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the baby saw all that, right?

00:54:17 Speaker_01
They like saw your past, they see you in the present and they see your future and they still picked you. And I think that that's what I want. That's what I always want parents to understand, is that, yes, there's a lack of resources. Yes, there is.

00:54:37 Speaker_01
I wish there was more. I wish there was more hummingbirds. I wish there was more Alaska Native Birth Workers Collectives, and Miwa-Jaws, and Mni Wiconi Health Clinics. I wish there was so many of those all over. And you're enough.

00:54:53 Speaker_02
But not enough Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services.

00:54:57 Speaker_00
All over Turtle Island. I want to talk about the cool thing that you're doing, Cami, with giving money to families.

00:55:03 Speaker_02
Oh yeah. I think that's super cool. This safety net. Make it rain.

00:55:08 Speaker_01
Make it rain. Yeah, so at Hummingbird we have our doula program. We have a home visiting program called Pili Makua Family Connections where we work with families up to their child's third birthday.

00:55:21 Speaker_01
And then we also have The Nest, which is a guaranteed basic income program. So we have 150 moms in it. They are all Native American, Alaska Native, Kanaka Maoli, or Pacific Islander.

00:55:34 Speaker_01
I live in the King County, Pierce County, and Tulalip is the area, our geographical area. We're full at 150 mamas and they get $1,250 no strings attached cash until their child's third birthday.

00:55:51 Speaker_01
It starts in pregnancy, so it's about $45,000 plus however far into their pregnancy they were that they're getting the money.

00:55:59 Speaker_01
When I saw the RFP or the request for proposals across my desk for this funding, I knew we needed it because when we look at maternal mortality rates, there's a lot of things that go and contribute to maternal mortality rates, but one of them

00:56:17 Speaker_01
is a lack of basic needs being met. Remember how I said 80% of maternal deaths are preventable, right?

00:56:25 Speaker_01
And so one of the recommendations that the Maternal Mortality Review Panel made to our state legislature here in Washington state is provide and meet the basic needs of pregnant women, right? Like that saves lives.

00:56:43 Speaker_01
Just providing someone's basic needs literally saves lives. We're the largest guaranteed income pilot in the United States as far as how much money people get and how long they get it.

00:56:57 Speaker_01
Many of our families are getting care through the doula program, through home visiting, and the guaranteed income. And that's where we really see where we think the magic happens. And that was very intentional. I'm a hardcore birth to three person.

00:57:12 Speaker_01
As humans, we develop 80% of our brain by the time we're three years old. So a baby is born with about 25% of their brain capacity. It's doubled in the first six months of life. And then it continues to grow until early adulthood.

00:57:28 Speaker_01
But 80% of that happens in the first three years of life. And the way we grow a brain is through fat, sleep, and love and affection. That's what grows the human brain. And so that's where breastfeeding comes in. That's where connecting with your baby.

00:57:44 Speaker_01
When a baby has a healthy, strong attachment and bond with their mom and their parents and other people around them, they are stronger individuals. They have a solid foundation. And so the guaranteed income is just adding to that.

00:58:02 Speaker_01
What we really want to show is if we give people money and give them culturally congruent supports through the first three years of their child's life, that that is where we really see significant impacts on that family and long-term for that child.

00:58:19 Speaker_01
When baby turns three and they discharge from the program, we're going to open up a $5,000, 529, our college savings account in that child's name for them as an investment into that second generation. How powerful, so amazing.

00:58:36 Speaker_00
Plenty of seeds for the future. Yeah, well, jeez, you know, pilamia, teakweed seed, hayshka, many thank yous, you know, for the work you're doing for our community, for our moms. Hopila, yes. Hopila, you know. It's so good.

00:58:52 Speaker_00
It's just really profound, you know, it's just, I'm so impressed. So thank you for the work you do. How can people support you?

00:59:00 Speaker_01
Oh, how can they support us? They can send you money. Yeah, they can definitely send money. I mean, while our guaranteed income program is fully funded by a philanthropist, our doula program, our home visiting program, are severely underfunded.

00:59:13 Speaker_01
We, for the first time, are having to turn people away. You know, we couldn't take any more November due dates or October due dates. We're getting there for December, you know, and that's really, really hard.

00:59:25 Speaker_01
And it's not because we don't have the staff. I could hire people in a heartbeat if there was the money behind them. Can people donate on your website?

00:59:34 Speaker_01
Yes, they can donate through the website, Hummingbird, www.hummingbird-ifs, as in indigenousfamilyservices.org.

00:59:44 Speaker_01
We're going to be doing holiday adoptions during the winter so looking, you know, if anyone, you know, maybe doesn't have like funds necessarily but is willing to donate toys or adopt a mama, a native mama, so she can get some love during the holidays would be really great.

01:00:08 Speaker_01
So yeah.

01:00:09 Speaker_00
Yeah. Do that instead of going Christmas shopping. Yeah. Adopt a mama. Adopt a mama. Adopt a mama. Adopt a new mama. I love that.

01:00:15 Speaker_01
We were talking about this because I adopted one of the families and I noticed that the mom didn't put anything for herself and I let the home visitor know, I need to know what this mom wants. And the home visitor was like, oh, she really doesn't.

01:00:27 Speaker_01
She says she doesn't want anything. And I was like, this is a great opportunity for you to talk to her about how important it is for her kids to see her experience joy. and to get a gift, right?

01:00:40 Speaker_01
And know that there's someone out there that loves her and is thinking about her. Those are important things for Native children to see their mom's experience and stuff. So she was like, okay, I'll tell her that.

01:00:51 Speaker_01
And then I got her measurements and she wants a ribbon skirt and that's what she's gonna get. So, with matching earrings. You're an angel, Gaby. Yeah, it's, you know, it is important. So that's where, you know, yeah. It'd be great.

01:01:06 Speaker_01
Gosh, well, we love you.

01:01:08 Speaker_00
Oh, I love you guys. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I loved everything you talked about, so I'm really grateful. Thank you for coming on all my relations. We finally did it. We finally did it. We finally did it.

01:01:19 Speaker_01
Five years in the making. Just about. Here you are.

01:01:23 Speaker_00
And I'm glad you were here with Temaris and all of the intersectionality. Yeah. Okay, and tell us how do folks find you on the gram?

01:01:30 Speaker_01
All right, so we are on Instagram at Hummingbird Family Services. So find us there.

01:01:38 Speaker_03
Anything else? All my relations.