Reviving Tradition: Navajo Community Embraces Traditional Birthing Practices
In a world where Western medical practices often dominate, a resurgence of traditional birthing methods is taking place among the Navajo people. Natasha Bowman, a Navajo doula and aspiring midwife, is at the forefront of this movement, striving to restore age-old practices that have been overshadowed for generations.
Bowman’s work involves creating spaces where families can unite to support birthing mothers. One poignant example involves a client whose home birth marked the first such event in her family since the era of her great-great-grandmother. This birth was a family affair, with women relatives and, notably, the woman’s father present for the first time.
Historically, the father had been excluded from witnessing the births of his children, as his wife delivered in hospitals while he awaited their return. During his daughter’s labor, he was invited into the birthing space, where he provided consolation and witnessed the powerful process firsthand. With tears, he expressed regret for missing his children’s births, realizing the profound experience of childbirth only after seeing his daughter in labor.
“Within the community, bringing in the aunts, the grandmas, the sisters, the cousins, bringing them all within that space, working as a community together. It’s beautiful to see everyone come together at a birth with the women around,” Bowman shared, highlighting the communal aspect of traditional births.
The revival of these practices involves more than just family presence. It includes ceremonies, songs, holistic herbs, and the usage of Native languages, all integral parts of the birthing process. However, this cultural renaissance follows a long history of suppression. Indigenous healing practices were once restricted under the 1883 Code of Indian Offenses, which penalized those who engaged in traditional ceremonies or medicine.
It wasn’t until 1978, with the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, that Native communities could freely pursue their traditional health practices. “We see that we had our traditional birthing practices long ago. It was taken from us when hospitals came into our communities, and then our traditional birth ways were taken from us. They started telling us it was unsafe,” Bowman explained.
Progress continues as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services approved a Section 1115 waiver last year, allowing Medicaid to cover traditional healing. Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) began reimbursing such services on October 1, making Arizona one of the pioneering states in this regard. The initiative seeks to provide culturally appropriate healthcare options for eligible members.
“I’m really happy that, after over a decade, or to this point, that the advocates in our state didn’t give up and that we just kept moving it forward because we really understood the value of it,” expressed Kim Russell, policy advisor at Sage Memorial Hospital on the Navajo Nation.
Traditional medicine practitioners like Hanley Manygoats, known as a Hatalii on the Navajo Nation, have seen a surge in demand. Having grown up with traditional healing, Manygoats now sees several clients weekly, compared to just one per month in the past.
“It’s all part about healing, spiritual healing. It’s all about this being the one with nature, mother earth, father sky,” Manygoats shared. “So we have all these stories that go with our traditional healing, our songs, our prayers. So it all starts with the origin stories.”
Many elders, experiencing these ceremonies for the first time in decades, find them deeply moving. “When I do prayers for the elders, they get emotional because they haven’t heard prayers like this in a long time,” Manygoats noted.
While AHCCCS coverage has expanded access to traditional healthcare, Manygoats pointed out its limitations. “It only covers minor ceremonies, not extensive, not the one day, three days. We have ceremonies that go up to nine days,” he explained.
Janeen Phillips, a doctoral candidate in health administration, underscores the significance of these developments. She works alongside Manygoats and emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between Western medical providers and traditional healers. “They absorb that energy from a person who they’re trying to help, versus a provider where it’s just kind of more of an external view of what’s happening to them and a prescription,” Phillips said.
Looking to the future, Russell hopes that Medicaid reimbursements will facilitate greater access to traditional medicine for tribal communities and pass this rich heritage to younger generations. “I kind of see it maybe expanding, being more exposed to our youth, who maybe have not had as much exposure,” she remarked.
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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