Writing and Birthing on Country: Examining Indigenous Australian Birth Stories from a Reproductive Justice Lens

Reproductive justice (RJ) calls for an integrated analysis, a holistic vision, and comprehensive strategies that push against structural conditions that control communities by regulating bodies, sexuality, labor, and reproduction (Ross & Solinger 2017). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have a maternal mortality ratio of 16.4 deaths per 100,000 Indigenous women giving birth (Clark et al 2019). Disparities in reproductive justice often persist through the erasure of lived experiences. My work examines birth stories (recounting via recorded, podcasted interview) with narrative analysis and poetic inquiry. While personal essays and spoken birth stories relay narratives as they are recalled, examining poetry (through poetic inquiry) will allow exploration of narrative in ways that can be likened to experiences of maternal/pregnant phenomenologies (i.e., intersubjectivity, multiple temporalities). Traditional Indigenous Australian poetry and storytelling often evokes Country as a reoccurring motif, intricately connected to First Nations Australian culture and cosmogeny. In this chapter, I will investigate birth stories as they relate to the First Nations Australian initiative of birthing on Country and reproductive injustices in some mainstream maternal care practices. Birthing on Country has been described as the practice of giving birth on traditional lands, or with elements of First Nations groups’ cultures, incorporated into the process. Being born on Country “connects an Aboriginal person to the land and community in a deeply cultural way and affords life-long privileges such as hunting and fishing rights, as well as lifelong responsibilities for looking after Country, both land and people” (Felton-Busch, Contemporary Nurse 33:161–162, 2009). Birthing on Country is also a maternal care service initiative, available to some birthing people in Australia. While many birthing people can exercise the choice to give birth on Country, others lack access to the hospitals, birth centers, and care providers that will uphold or facilitate the practice. This chapter will explore First Nations women’s (as the participants featured identified as women) birth stories through poetic inquiry, as they relate to birthing on Country, Indigenous women’s access thereto, and their narratives of interaction with care systems and providers.