Our Approach
We Invite You
In our mission to keep our Native babies and mothers alive and safe, we hold a circle of community care – a protective, supportive, welcoming and sacred place for Native mothers, birthing people, advocates, community members and providers to gather, learn collectively and support each other. We are conveners, culture keepers, advocates and movement builders.
Our Ways of Doing Have Sustained Our Work
“It’s all about just encouraging those partnerships to happen in a good way and to remember that we don’t, and can’t, be driven by the nonprofit structure. We must be driven by the needs of our community and our sensibilities as Native people.” Shelly Means
It is an honor to share some of our ways of doing things that have sustained our community building work over the years. We invite you to lift up and build upon these principles and approaches in your work and to join us in coming together to grow a movement to keep our Native babies alive.
The Collective Nature of Our Organizing
To begin to explain how we have done NAWDIM organizing over the years we must first lift up the collective nature that is at the core of everything we do. We build relationships, share knowledge, invite all voices, and promote collaborative work – as opposed to being a program, a direct service provider, or an exclusive gatekeeper.
Convening Knowledge Carriers
Key to the NAWDIM story is that our organizing is about consistently convening people who serve the moms who are birthing our next generations. We convene moms, aunties, Native-community based support like doulas and home visitors, and direct service providers in public health. Our circle also includes Native researchers and policy advocates.
Example: Every five years we bring together knowledge carriers to envision the next five years and say, “Okay, here’s what’s happening today across Native communities related to infant and maternal health. Here’s what needs to change, the system. Let’s get to work and really prioritize.”
Our Role is to Be Aunties
NAWDIM doesn’t function in the way most nonprofits typically do things, which is very structured and very formal. We’re not operating programs. We’re not a coalition. Instead, our role is to be the aunties, engaging the people who are directly serving our moms and babies and keeping them in relationship with each other.
Encouraging Relationships and Partnerships
We’ve seen over the years that through nurturing relationships, key partnerships happen and grow. A good example is the early story of Indigenous doulas in our community. Our people are mistreated and even harmed by the Western health care and human services systems. NAWDIM recognized over time the need for more Native doulas, midwives, nurses, home visitors and doctors. In 2015, we wanted to prioritize doulas and were able to find a funding stream to support it. At the time it was Daybreak Star Doulas, with Cami Goldhammer and the Ina Maka home visiting program. The staff there really put some work into developing a doula program where they’re training people to be doulas. They had salaried positions for doulas providing birth support for American Indian and Alaska Native moms.
Building a Collective Voice
Everything is connected to the health of our moms and babies – including a safe home, nutritious food, connection to culture and community, safe outdoor spaces, access to transportation, education and meaningful work that pays a living wage. Building a collective voice is about inviting people in with the spirit of “we value your knowledge”. NAWDIM doesn’t claim to be the experts on all of this and we’re not here to compete with anybody. We’re here to lift up the good work that’s being done in the community and extend an invitation to join our circle.
Example: If you’re working on housing for indigenous people, and that includes moms and babies, teach us what you’re doing. Tell us what’s working and how we can collectively support what you’re doing.
Taking Action
When barriers impact Native participation in Health Policy, NAWDIM is watchful for opportunities to directly address them, and responsive to our allies when they reach out. We show up when invited, we organize within our circle, and we take action.
Example: NAWDIM members provided leadership to the Governor’s Inter-Agency Council on Health Disparities’ 2015 Adverse Birth Outcomes Committee; Washington Maternal Mortality Review tribal positions; and the King County Family Ways Program.
Convening to Build Trust and Erase Silos
NAWDIM is not saying grassroots are the only ones who hold the strategies and solutions to achieving Indigenous health equity. Tribes, public health, service providers and other community workers also hold strategies and solutions. We want to break down the territorial nature of this work, improve communications, and work in a unified way, fully respecting the roles and knowledge we each carry. It’s critical that we learn about each others’ roles and gain trust in one another. That’s the purpose of NAWDIM convenings.
Our Collective Advocacy
TRANSCRIPT: Up to a point, we see Washington State being a leader around health equity. Yet we’re still always having to remind folks that Native people are still here. This is not just about health issues, across the board, Native people are always invisible. We’re always having to say, no, we’re here, we’re still here, we’re strong, and we’re not going to go away. That’s one reason for growing a national movement because so often our voices aren’t even at the table. Yet we have seen that when we use a collective voice in our advocacy, we can make change. There are people in our circles who have been central in advocating for policies to improve the lives and health of our Native people.
Medicaid Reimbursement for Indigenous Doulas
TRANSCRIPT: Our founding mother Emma (last name) chaired the Governor’s Interagency Council on Health Disparities. In (Year), she invited Leah Tanner and Shelley Means to be a part of a working group that had been going for about two years that was focused on adverse birth outcomes. This put us at a table informing public health in the State Department of Health, and other agencies, about the solutions we identified that would significantly help our Native families. Medicaid reimbursement for doulas was one of the key recommendations that our collective work with others on that committee came to. It’s now in the works and is going to happen. The state is doing their process to make it happen. Once this outcome is actually in place, we will share out to partners in other states who also believe that Indigenous doulas for our people is necessary.
Paid Family Leave
TRANSCRIPT: Cami Goldhammer is very central in the paid family leave policy work that’s happening in the state and guaranteed basic income policy work specific with the, the angles on that for families and for indigenous families, specifically.
Pay Equity
TRANSCRIPT: Our people who are serving our people deserve pay equity and we continue to advocate that. Leah is on the Advisory Council for Health Equity Zones in Washington State. It’s looking at how underfunded certain areas of our state are such as Tribal communities, rural communities, etc.
Health Equity Zones
TRANSCRIPT: So the health equity zones initiative came from the legislature a couple of years ago and Department of Health, sent out invitations for folks to join, join the council and they had some spots set aside specifically for tribal folks for tribal representation. And so I was fortunate to be able to be invited to join that. And we’ve gone through a process where we develop criteria and the other steps we needed for communities to nominate themselves to be a Health Equity Zone. And so the purpose of the health equity zones is to convene communities to really take a look at their own their own health issues that they want to work. Directly on and to create a coalition to begin work on that on the issues that they identified. And so there was a rural zone and a urban zone that was just selected last month, and there will be a tribal zone, which was taken a little bit longer because there are only three of us on the Advisory Council. And there were four but somebody had had to step back. So they’re just three of us. We didn’t want to have the responsibility of doing it, just three of us. But we wanted to take our time and we’ll be inviting other folks to join the work that’s put out in front of us and we hope to have our Tribal zone by next year.
Birth Equity
TRANSCRIPT: And there’s also the birth equity project which I sit on their advisory council to which solicited proposals for groups that wanted to work on brand equity. And I believe there are two Native organizations are one tribe and one native organization that received funding through the birth equity project that was the Nisqually and then a group over in Spokane and the Spokane group is really interesting, because it’s a collaboration between the urban folks in Spokane and the Spokane Tribe. And so I’m really excited to see what comes out of their work.
Maternal Mortality Review Committees or Councils
TRANSCRIPT: One other example of the advocacy work recent is there’s this movement that’s been happening for a few years to have maternal mortality review committees or councils something across the nation, right, and the data often were often invisible in the data as Native people. And you can imagine the representation of native people on these panels review panels, isn’t happening really. And so. In Washington State, there was a recent opening for one one tribal position. And there are two people that two women who have served on this this panel for a few terms since its existence, you know, since it was founded anyway, and you know, it’s like we had people interested in applying and they went and looked at the process and it was awful, you know, five page essays to you know, blah blah blah talk about yourself and credentials and all that and you know, stuff that anyway, horrible process and so we reached out to a contact in the health department and gave them that feedback. And they said, you know, we agree that it’s important to have since native community has the highest rate of women dying in pregnancy or after, you know, in the first year after the dot after they give birth. We do need more native people on this is panels. And so just give us names of people who want to serve on these panels. And we had I think we added four more people. I have more people and so we have representation now and and we’re even leaning towards saying Could we just have a mortality review panel that’s focusing on the native community, because our solutions are going to be different from our community than the solutions that work in the system for other women. So anyway, that’s where that’s just another example.