Postpartum Healing Lodge

Postpartum Healing Lodge

Each Postpartum Healing Lodge training builds the movement toward birth justice for BIPOC families and communities. We address systemic change by disrupting the current model of oppression and systemic racism in public health and hospital systems and empower families to reclaim traditional models of care and the power they hold for Indigenous communities. We strive to train as many BIPOC birth workers as possible who then provide healing care to their communities in the face of systemic racism and historical trauma. Our program is built to serve those families and communities that have been historically and currently marginalized by systems of oppression through forced separation and erasure of their birth and breastfeeding traditions in an attempt to eradicate them.

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Mission and Vision:

Postpartum Healing Lodge provides traditional birth, postpartum, and lactation care for indigenous families along with curating online courses for birth workers, community members, and professionals who serve Indigenous communities. Our vision is to create a community of birth workers and to serve families throughout the birth and postpartum period in traditional and sacred ways. The importance of “for us by us” care is at the center of this movement and our work directly reflects the community we create among birth workers.

Service Model: 

Our current organizational priorities are:

• Supporting traditional birth and postpartum care for Indigenous families 
• Training Black, Indigenous, and people of color birth workers to reclaim birthing and postpartum traditions for their communities
• Building a birth justice movement that disrupts systemic oppression and works to restore ancestral practices for families, recognizing the importance of the birth and postpartum space  

Successes to Date:

• Recipient of the ROSE Village Innovating Perinatal Services 2020 fellowship 
• Member of the 2021 CORE Cohort  
• Racial Equity Young Parents Fund Awardee
• Nourishing Nations co-founder 
• Sacred Bundle Indigenous Birth Worker Alliance co founder
• Co-contributor of 2021 Michigan Native Breastfeeding Week proclamation
• Over 250 people have graduated from Postpartum Healing Lodge, the 8-week online postpartum doula immersion 
• Over 700 people attended the Postpartum Vitality masterclass, a free online event hosted on Facebook live
• Creating the Bamidyaang (We Support Each Other) Initiative curriculum – the state of Michigan’s first and only curriculum for Indigenous families who have experienced pregnancy and infant loss, working to provide culturally-resonant care rather than perpetuate further harm
• Developing a full spectrum Indigenous doula training curriculum in collaboration with the organization Aunties on the Road; we had 300 applicants apply to our program and have trained 60 Indigenous doulas across Canada and the United States in the past two months alone, building the birth justice movement and improving birth outcomes through Doula care for families

Leadership:

Raeanne Madison, MPH is a crane clan citizen of the Ojibwe nation and also carries Indigenous Mexika and mixed European heritage (French, English, Spanish, and Dutch). An Indigenous mother, full spectrum birth worker, and community educator, Raeanne has dedicated over a decade of service to her community. She has a special interest in land and kinship-based practices, food as medicine, and the reclamation of Indigenous ceremonial practices. Raeanne lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. 

Partners:

• Michigan Breastfeeding Network
• Panoramic Doula
• Black and Indigenous Leaders of the CORE Cohort
• Nourishing Nations
• Sacred Bundle Birthworker Collective
• Birth Bruja
• Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan
• Chippewa County BEST
• Minwaashin Lodge in Ottawa, CA 
• Niinde Doulas
• Open Arms Perinatal Services 
• Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere (ROSE)
• Birthing Advocacy Doula Trainings
• Whole Body Pregnancy Doula Trainings
• Indigescuela 
• Navajo Nation Breastfeeding Coalition 
• Hood Herbalism

Our Vision for the Future: 

• Restored trust in our intuitive and innate bodies and babies, ultimately bringing power back to birthing and lactating people, families, and communities.
• Indigenous peoples have the tools to make the best decisions for their experience and reproductive ceremonies are a shining light of traditional Indigenous culture.
• Comprehensive traditional care available for every Indigenous birthing family at no cost for these services.