Spotlight on Student Excellence: Alycia Two Bears Receives the Carol Hird Memorial Award

What inspired you to pursue midwifery, and how has your cultural background shaped that decision? 

My community very loudly told me, you are a midwife, birth keeper, and Knowledge holder. My friend Nadine Onespot was the first one who said to me, when I think of you, I think of a Midwife. Not because you have five kids and birthed the last two at home with midwives. She later shared a dream about me wearing blue scrubs, a stethoscope around my neck, supporting a birth. I believe in the ancestral wisdom of our dreams, and the timing of her vision was when I needed a new direction. That was seven years ago this summer. 

Over the last 20 years people have sent me the 3am texts and photos, I’m bleeding, is my baby okay? I can’t access emergency care right now. With no medical background, my role as a mama to five kiddos was why people reached out to me. People trust my lived experience as a parent. For the last seven years I have done many trainings to foster my role as a full-spectrum doula. My teachings around blood, birth, parenting, Ceremony, kinship in the physical and spirit realms have all been shaped by my late Elder, Two Spirit Métis Poet, Sharron Proulx-Turner. I continue to honour and share these teachings with urban Indigenous youth, centering queer and Two Spirit kin as deserving of care and safety within community. 

I keep myself informed with harm reduction to support all family dynamics in pregnancy and after baby comes earth side. I also stay connected to local and national grassroots organizations to keep families connected to resources they may not otherwise know about. I love learning new skills and knowledge to better take care of my community and kinships based in community organizing. We keep us safe. My project, The Moon Time Project, ensures access to products for menstruating bodies, based in my nehiyaw ways, for those navigating houselessness in collaboration with Walls Down Collective. This is to prevent street folks from petty theft charges from large consumer-based stores, especially Indigenous youth in the Foster Care system who are simply meeting their bodies basic needs. I keep my hands energetically light for the babies and families I tend to. My community fully understands why my activism is the way it is and has always valued my role as birth keeper. They are incredibly proud of my new journey into Midwifery. 

Shifting into the role of midwife was the next step of greater responsibility to ensure my community has access to the best care provider who centers this time of life as Ceremony, and fiercely protects it as such. 

How do you hope to serve and support Indigenous families and communities through your practice? 

My hopes for my practice are to continue supporting Indigenous families. I have always supported urban and on reserve families as a Birth Keeper, and I will continue to do so as a Midwife. Where will this be exactly? I am unsure of those details at this moment. I do not always get the control over my life the way I think I do. Those Ancestors got dreams for me that I can’t even begin to grasp, I’m sure. I would love have a practice where hunting and hiding are central to making mossbags, newborn moccasins and medicine pouches. Where the bones are used for bone broth to create nutritionally dense foods for prenatal classes and postpartum meals for the newest families. Think wild rice, cranberries, and moose meat dishes, with berry soup and warm teas made of mint and Labrador leaves. Prenatal circles are inclusive of breast/chestfeeding as babies’ first foray of food sovereignty. That birthing Lodges are acts of community love and intergenerational strength. That these circles shift into parenting circles where we support new families breaking down the harmful narratives of colonization. That we reclaim our parenting skills as safe, as protective as normal. Where we can build language nests, offering parents and their families an opportunity to (re)learn our nehiyaw languages, together. These are my dreamy hopes for my practice, to support families in being fully immersed in their role as parent. We deserve this softness, as a minimum for surviving the ongoing impacts of colonization and genocide.

I can see myself working out of Saskatoon, to serve both the urban Indigenous and my home Nation, Mistawasis Nehiyawak First Nation. I would love to support a resurgence of home births and the knowledge that has been there. Considering my dad was birthed in a field on the Nation, I was born in a hospital, and I birthed three of my kids in a hospital then two at home with midwives, I do not think this is a far stretch from reality. We have the success of the Birthing Centre close by in Sturgeon Lake. We could do something as meaningful for the community together. I would hope all my family members who felt harmed by the medical racism they endured in hospitals would find healing in a community-led, alternative, and safe means for the way our future babies are birthed. 

What has been the most meaningful or memorable part of your training so far? 

My brain folds have at least quadrupled in size, I swear! I love who I am learning from, the way lectures are structured, and the assurance of support to be successful, is an incredible cocoon to be in, so soon. The most memorable part was the opening of our program on the Land with Elders. I got lost, as a Calgarian would, on the first day down at the UBC Farm. Despite being late, Elder Roberta was gentle and accepting of my hand-to-heart apology. I was also able to gift the Elders and guest speaker ceremonial tobacco, sage, and sweetgrass at the end of this welcoming. My heart knew I was in the right place, and to begin this journey in a good way was everything to me. 

What advice would you share with other Indigenous students who may be considering midwifery?  

Go to a birth! Every version of birth is valid—go experience it all. This is a very easy way to see if this is a role you want to continue to explore. To be a part of something more than you is humbling. Then check out all the programs available to you. Each program has a different process and requirements for entry. Be prepared to do upgrading and the required University courses before you can apply. This could mean another year, two, or three before you can apply. Be determined in your desire to do well, for yourself and your community. To want to continue the path into midwifery is listening to a voice inside you that says yes—you are smart enough, you are deserving of a sacred role, and you can take one step forward at a time, especially when it is hard and scary. Trust yourself. Trust your ancestors.  

What are you most excited about in your upcoming year of learning and clinical experiences? 

I am so excited to work in my first few clinical placements of this degree and to be able to practice so many of the learnings I have received. I am also looking forward to learning one-on-one with my preceptors. 

Do you have any words of advice for other students applying for scholarships and awards? 

My words of advice are to simply apply to any and all awards you qualify for, even if you don’t think you will receive it — you may surprise yourself!