MammaPrimitiva Traditional Community Birth Workers Council
MammaPrimitiva Traditional Community Birth Workers Council preserves and protects cultural/indigenous sovereignty including Traditional Midwifes and Indigenous Practitioners (TMIP) as we continue to carry the knowledge and exercise our self- determination to protect our rites/rights. This council shares cultural practices and knowledge from our families and cultural/ indigenous traditions passed down orally, preserving the accountability of TCBW. The council has responsibility to teach and protect birthing traditions, protect our food, medicinal plants, water and land and to govern ourselves and uphold the legacy of our elders. We are committed to carrying the torch and bringing in the next generations of TMIP. We promote these efforts as a world concept to protect our children and all life.
Mission Statement: To preserve Traditional Midwives/Birth Workers which includes Indigenous Practitioners that continue to use the ancestral wisdom that preserves food, land and cultural sovereignty. Each woman and family have a central role in all aspects of her ceremony of birth and relevant diverse healthcare options throughout life.
Traditional Midwife Definition
Traditional Midwifery holds the responsibility and accountability for our ancestors. Our direct-entry routes protect and guides the expecting mother and baby in the perinatal time. We honor birth as the first ceremony of life, holding long standing traditions connected to the forces of nature and spirit to help bring life into this world. The traditional midwife guides the mother and baby as they birth. The Traditional Midwives are obligated to keep birth, the first ceremony of life, that was passed on to them strongly rooted in our ways. Our ways are taught to the mother and traditional birth apprentices (attendants, birth workers) in the direct route of entry that honors the ceremony of birth. We stay connected to the natural cycles of nature and our medicines. Accountability and responsibility are an essential part of a traditional midwife’s work during the reproductive period, assuring the safest delivery for baby/mother and lifetime health.
Accountability of Traditional Midwives
- Show your genealogy, mentors, teachers or family that goes back to traditional/ Indigenous knowledge of birth that solely uses plant medicines/massage/communication and that does not rely on any legend drugs or ultrasound.
- Show that you have only worked Traditionally in your assisting of women, without legend drugs or forms of ultrasound or have undone that training.
- Responsibility to work hard to protect your mamma earth, water, protect your ancestral bones and all life.
- Preserve our titles and ways as said by mentors with no compromise …”walk your talk and be your word.”
- Work with women during the reproductive period, including well baby care, assuring the safest delivery for baby/mother and lifetime health.
- Successfully completed oral knowledge and skills assessments required by MammaPrimitiva TCBW Council. Demonstrate profciency in traditional midwifery practices by passing the assessments facilitated by experienced traditional midwives. Actively participated in births attendance under the guidance and supervision of traditional midwives and traditional birth workers.
We invite, embrace and hold space for those who are on the pathway to Traditional Midwifery which emcompasses, Traditional Community Birth Workers and Indigenous Practitioners. MammaPrimitiva has a course and oral exam for those who are actively in the process of releasing practices which are known to be harmful to mother, babies and families. We serve as a stepping stone for those who are ready to fully connect with their ancestral lineage, and seek to protect and preserve Traditional Wisdom, Herbal Knowledge and Intuitive Motherwit as a Way of Life and our Birth Rite/Right.
MammaPrimitiva Traditional Midwives, Activists, Indigenous Practitioners
Ms. Margaret Charles Smith, the mamma of traditional midwives and Clare Loprinzi, Traditional Midwives
Clare Loprinzi, Traditional Midwife, Activist. Photo taken testifying at Military 106 meeting against bombing ocean ancestors.
Luzmila Moran SSSSand Hampi Warmikuna Cotacachi Tradititional Parteras
Louise Benally Big Mountain Arizonia Activist, Indigenous Practitioner
Raymonde Agella from Ayiti Activist, Mother, Indigenous Practitioner, TCBW
Cynthia Ellis, Lubafu Isieni, Cultural Ambassador Belize.
"As this pilgrimage continues, I have been the weaver taking the strands of the journey into a space and place of oneness and convergence. I have created a tapestry, a mosaic of colors. I have found my name, who I am: Lubafu Isieni, unconditional love, powerful essence of love. This pilgrimage has taken me across many lands - no borders, no limits. I have become free, not just as a woman but as a human being, preparing to lead and change the narrative for humanity, daring to stand tall and grip the earth for seven generations to come. I feel the ancestors that have been here before me. I have released the trauma, the pain the suffering and the wails of my own humanity and my own inhumanity. I embrace myself with the spirit of oneness, knowingness, and transformation. As a part of the cultural heritage of humanity, I am a Garifuna woman answering the call of the ancestors in the dabuyeba."
Special honour
Beverly Beech
Activist, Birth Advocate, Author, Amazing
The council would like to honour their member Beverley Beech who passed over over in 2023. She was an author, freelance writer, researcher, campaigner, mother of two sons, with three grandchildren. She campaigned to improve maternity care since the birth of her second son in 1976. MammaPrimitiva is honored to have such a strong aged warrior that continues to work for us all.