The birth of settler colonialism: Erika Campbell, Melanie Murdock, Sarah Durant, Carole Couchie, Carmel Meekis, Charitie Rae, Julie Kenequanash, Lisa Boivin, Jacob Barry, Arthi Erika Jeymohan, Karen Lawford, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ responses to evacuation for birth in Ontario: conceptualizing risk through an Indigenous midwifery-led approach’, International Journal for Equity in Health, 24, 2025, #135 | settler colonial studies blog

The birth of settler colonialism: Erika Campbell, Melanie Murdock, Sarah Durant, Carole Couchie, Carmel Meekis, Charitie Rae, Julie Kenequanash, Lisa Boivin, Jacob Barry, Arthi Erika Jeymohan, Karen Lawford, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ responses to evacuation for birth in Ontario: conceptualizing risk through an Indigenous midwifery-led approach’, International Journal for Equity in Health, 24, 2025, #135

17May25

Abstract: Currently, pregnant Indigenous Peoples living in remote, rural, and northern Indigenous communities in Canada are subjected to evacuation birth policy, whereby they are evacuated out of their community to large, urban hospitals to give birth. Evacuation for birth is assumed to decrease biomedical risk because people are birthing in hospitals. In Canadian health systems, evaluating and mitigating biomedical risk has become a standard in health decision-making but this framework disregards Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies that guide Indigenous people in their evaluation of health risk. In this study, we sought to understand how pregnant Indigenous people in Ontario conceptualise health and risk.

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