Our Journey
A Sacred Journey to Address Native Infant Mortality
In our mission to keep our Native babies and mothers safe and thriving, we hold a circle of community care – a sacred place to gather, support each other, share knowledge, and set collective priorities for achieving birth equity . We are conveners, culture keepers, birth givers, advocates, and movement builders.
We Are Conveners
Since 2002 we’ve convened each month. With love and steadfastness, we continue to hold this sacred space, this circle, for a community of care providers, advocates, Native community members and allies, to educate one another about everything that’s connected to Native infant mortality, and maternal and child health. Over time these conversations have become threads weaving together our collective knowledge.
We Are Culture Keepers
From the beginning of our collective dialog, we knew solutions about how to keep our babies and mother safe and thriving, would be found in our cultural teachings and values. Traditional family health knowledge has been held in our communities for millennia. This knowledge has been passed from our grandmothers and aunties to our young mothers for generations and generations. Yet in urban settings, not everybody has a connection to their traditional teachings. Historical factors have separated us from each other, and our cultural knowledge, including racist structures, bad policies, and genocide.
A desire to reconnect Native families to cultural teachings about healthy birthing and childcare led to the idea of teaching women who are expecting, and their families, how to make and use cradleboards to keep their babies safe. In 2003, NAWDIM began to offer infant cradleboard workshops to expectant and new moms. In 2017, we began Honoring New Babies each year in a ceremonial give-away event.
I really truly believe that my connections to traditions have allowed me to be able to flourish, even being away from my homeland and being away from all of those traditions.
What We're Known For In Our Local Communities
These gatherings that we have honed over the years provide pivotal moments and opportunities for expectant mothers and families to reconnect to culture, community, and each other – all while learning collectively how to keep their babies–our babies–safe.
Cradle Board Classes
The cradleboard provides a bridge to the cultural teachings from our grandmothers before us – to all that traditional knowledge, strength and wisdom about family safety and health.
The teachings around the collective making of the cradle boards create a trusted space to connect with expectant Native mothers and families to discuss topics about safe sleep, reducing the risk of sudden infant death syndrome and community resources.
Baby Welcoming
In 2016 we began a tradition of Honoring New Babies and their families each year at an annual community celebration. The ceremony includes an honor song, round dance, give-away of a variety of baby items and a welcome from tribal elders.
What We Also Do
We Are Advocates
Through our many early conversations it became clear that we needed a more unified voice. So together, as a collective, we advocate for change at every level, throughout all the different institutions and systems that affect the lives of our moms and babies. Harmful policies and invisibility in data have led to disproportionate American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) infant mortality and maternal child health outcomes. We have nurtured fledgling projects, our own, and others, that are now recognized as innovative Native-led interventions.
Example: In 2022 our co-coordinators Shelley Means and Leah Tanner became co-authors on a report called Assessing Social Determinants of Health in a Prenatal and Perinatal Cultural [ADD LINK] Intervention for American Indians and Alaska Natives [Report Link] paper discusses how a cradleboard educational intervention incorporates national guidelines to address maternal and infant health while mediating social determinants of health.
Movement Builders
Today NAWDIM is working towards the collective Indigenous birth equity vision of uniting movements, advocating for systems change, and continuing to convene for collective education and dialog. We extend an invitation to all to join the circle, to carry our collective work forward in the spirit of growing this Indigenous birth equity movement. Go to our Growing the Circle page to learn about our approaches to this sacred work.