Mothers who give birth in a healthcare setting may give birth to a “healthy” baby. Yet, they may feel disconnected to hospital rituals. It is our view that safe birth is not limited to giving birth to a physically healthy baby. Instead, it incorporates an experience that respects cultural and spiritual beliefs of the mother, baby, family and clan. Being part of the training programme creates an opportunity for you to join a group of healers, midwives, counsellors and birth advocates who draw from different disciplines. At the heart of their practice is the need to recover, restore and preserve Indigenous knowledge of birthing which was suppressed and is still excluded because of colonialism.

We acknowledge that biomedicine saves many lives of women and babies with complications. However, failure to dismantle hierarchy of knowledges between biomedical and Indigenous birthing practices contributes to a perpetual erasure of wisdom which was passed from one generation to another. We believe that such preservation is necessary to save many people from cultural and spiritual alienation. In the end, a balance between physical, mental, cultural and spiritual safety is necessary to heal the world, one birth at a time.