Restoring First Nation birth knowledge and practices and the impact on mental wellness: reclaiming space
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The research focuses on the impact of practicing and promoting Indigenous knowledge on mental wellness. Mental wellness as defined by First Nations includes feeling hope, belonging, meaning, and purpose. For this study, First Nations birth helpers were trained to provide services in two northern Manitoba First Nation communities and in Winnipeg. Of the thirty-six birth helpers who were trained, ten were interviewed for the analysis of this thesis. The project was developed using Indigenous research methodology, where the interview process was developed in partnership with the community advisory circles. The interview included questions about their experiences and how being a birth helper relates to their own mental wellness. The interviews were conducted over the phone or in-person, and then transcribed, validated by participants, and analyzed using reflective thematic analysis. The results indicate that reclaiming and restoring birth knowledge impacts hope, belonging, meaning and purpose for the birth helpers, and by extension their families and community. Birth helpers are revitalizing Indigenous knowledge which has historically been held by women to support mothers and families with culturally-based care. Prior to the medicalization of birth, the delivery of a baby was a community event that provided community members and families the ability to celebrate, welcome, and support the babies being born into their nations with culture, language, and connection to place. Reclaiming and practicing birth traditions is the first step to returning birth knowledge and eventually birth to communities. This work echoes the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s 94 Calls to Action 12 and 22, which call for culturally appropriate early childhood education programs for families and the recognition and use of Indigenous health knowledge within the health care systems. To support the expansion of birth helpers, further training is required to meet the needs of all First Nations. Mentorship, and partnerships are required to integrate the birth helper role into existing systems of support.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".