Minobimadziwin: The Good Life for Aboriginal Women

It has long been established that, on the whole, Aboriginal women in Canada do not enjoy good health. The Aboriginal Women's Health Research Synthesis Project of 2001 reported that Aboriginal women are characterized by a health profile one would normally associate with the developing world, citing lower life expectancy rates than the mainstream population, along with higher rates of suicide, substance abuse, spousal violence, incarceration, sexually transmitted diseases, disability and chronic illness.1 This is the legacy of colonization, lived out through the day-to-day lives of contemporary Aboriginal women. In our efforts to find a way out of this crisis, we need to call upon a broad based understanding of healthy living as our ancestors knew it, and we need to reclaim our identities as Aboriginal women.

Mainstream strategies typically focus on the physical elements of well-being, but as Aboriginal people, we know that this is not enough. Our elders remind us that good health encompasses not only the physical, but also the mental, emotional and spiritual elements of our being. The Anishnaabe talk about good health, or "the good life" as "minobimadziwin." This state of being is achieved through maintaining a harmony and balance of the mind, body and spirit of the individual, and in being in harmony with all of creation around us.

Few of us can boast that we have achieved this state of well-being; it is a lifelong journey to find such balance. Yet this understanding offers an important framework for our individual struggles towards well-being, as well as in our collective work towards the recovery of our peoples.

The contemporary state of disease among Aboriginal people is grounded in our experiences of oppression and dispossession. Aboriginal women suffer the ill effects of material poverty, but they also suffer from a poverty that happened when our traditional knowledge, cultures and identities were stripped away from us through aggressive policies of assimilation and cultural genocide. This erasure is a direct cause for all of the appalling statistics about the state of Aboriginal people. The good news is that our experiences have forced us to develop some of the most creative and cutting edge work today in the area of health, healing and recovery.

Most of the healing work we have done has incorporated the genius of our ancestors. This makes sense, for if we have become sick from dispossession, then the only way we are going to get better is to reclaim the cultural, intellectual and spiritual ways that were taken from us. In order to have good health and a good life as Aboriginal people, we have to become secure again with our Aboriginal cultures and selves. If we are alienated from who we are and where we have come from, we experience an intellectual, emotional and spiritual rupture that can make us sick.

I often do community based research and consultation on social and health programming and have learned that the most successful programs are those which are culture based. Whether dealing with diabetes, fetal alcohol syndrome or quitting smoking, clients are most responsive to programs that offer traditional teachings, knowledge and approaches. For example, if we are doing diabetes prevention, we can talk about traditional foods, and how Aboriginal people understood and practiced healthy eating in the past. Children with fetal alcohol syndrome can benefit gready from traditional medicines and re-establishing their relationship with the land. Quitting smoking can involve traditional teachings about the appropriate use of tobacco.

My personal contribution to the betterment of Aboriginal women's health has been to write and teach about Aboriginal female identity. This work started when I was a Masters student, doing research that documented the generally dire conditions of Native women. After listening to the stories of women who had suffered untold abuses, I needed to find some sense of hope. I needed a vision of a healthy Aboriginal female population, and of women who were well situated in their communities and the Canadian society at large.

When it came time to write my Master's thesis, I decided to map out the path to a positive Aboriginal female identity and experience by interviewing Aboriginal women across Canada. I sought out leaders, educators, artists, activists and community workers and asked them how they had come to a positive sense of themselves as Aboriginal women, in spite of all the obstacles they had surely encountered. I eventually wrote a book out of this thesis,2 demonstrating that Aboriginal women arrive at a place of health and balance by engaging in a process of resistance, cultural reclamation and reconstruction of our traditional ways to fit a modern existence. This identity building process also includes a stage in which women bring their strength and power to use by acting on a sense of responsibility to community. The process of resist, reclaim, construct and act thus allows us to fulfill our responsibilities to ourselves, our families, communities, nations and all of creation, for we know that the good health of others and of our mother earth is connected to our individual states of well-being, and vice-versa. This is truly healthy living.

Over the years, there have been many Aboriginal women who have taught me invaluable lessons about the journey towards well-being, the good life, or minobimadziwin. I see it as my responsibility to share this knowledge with others. I am hopeful that one day, we will see health statistics on Aboriginal women that demonstrate the power of our commitment to healing and wellness, and the truth of our vision. Hai hai!

NOTES

1. Dion Stout M, Kipling GD, Stout R. Aboriginal Women's Health Research Synthesis Project, Final Report. Winnipeg: Centres of Excellence for Women's Health, 2001.

2. Andersen K. A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood. Toronto: Sumach Press, 2000.

Kim Anderson, Aboriginal Women's Health and Healing Research Group

Kim Andersen (Cree/Métis) is a planning committee member of the Aboriginal Women's Health and Healing Research Group, a body that is committed to research, policy development and action on Aboriginal women's health and healing through the establishment of a Centre of Excellence for Aboriginal Women's Health and Healing. Kim is the author of A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood and the co-editor (with Bonita Lawrence) of Strong Women Stories: Native Vision and Community Survival.

Copyright Centres of Excellence for Women's Health Spring 2005
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