“Sacred Midwifery: Woman as the First Home”

with Katsi Cook

Thursday,  July 14, 2022 at 3 PM Eastern DaylightTime 

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Drawing from Six Nations longhouse traditionalist oral tradition and matrilineal structures, Elder Mohawk midwife Katsi Cook, director of the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program, will present elements of her visionary perspective on sacredness in birthing– Woman as the First Environment.

“In pregnancy our bodies sustain life. At the breast of the women, the generations are nourished. From the bodies of women flows the relationship of those generations both to society and the natural world. In this way is the earth our mother, the old people said. In this way, we as women are earth.”

The work of the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program elevates the lives, dreams, and voices of North American Indigenous women elders who are working to heal, strengthen, and restore the balance of indigenous communities and the world. Fellowship cohorts are connected knowers and co-creators who are empowered to identify their values, inherent purpose, and experiences in self-determined ways for the sustainability of their people and sacred homelands. They are the courageous matriarchs who are deeply engaged with their communities, building solutions from Indigenous knowledge, wisdom, and practice. Using a narrative construction approach that is threaded through sequential cohorts, this orality-capture process mounts a re-membering from which Indigenous women’s knowledge, wisdom, and practice reflects matriarchal consciousness in intergenerational knowledge transfer. 

Katsi Cook is an Elder Mohawk midwife. She is the founding midwife of the Six Nations Birthing Centre where she grounded midwifery education in Iroquoian cosmology. Katsi is also a co-founder of the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives where she shares her experiences of the implicate world of birth, dream, and ceremony. As director of the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program Katsi serves as ambassador to North American Indigenous women’s leadership circles. Spirit Aligned works to strengthen and empower Indigenous women’s knowledge and wisdom networks. In June of 2022 Katsi will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Toronto Metropolitan University, recognizing her “extraordinary contribution to the betterment of culture, society, and the local community.”

Save these dates for the next ASWM Salons:

August 25, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“Thinking Yours Doesn’t Stink: Dis/Respect for Others”
Barbara Mann

September 8, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“Women’s Drumming Traditions: Medicine, Magic and Metaphysics“
Ubaka Hill

September 22, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“Fact-checking Feminism (The Haudenosaunee Influence) “
Sally Roesch Wagner

October 6, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“When Yoginis Appear with Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-Dual Matrix “
Monica Mody

 

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.