Aboriginal mothering, FASD prevention and the contestations of neoliberal citizenship

Abstract

Over the past 25 years, Aboriginal leaders, community advocates, children's and women's health specialists and Canadian government agencies have drawn increasing attention to the perceived need to undertake targeted initiatives to prevent fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) in indigenous communities. In pursuit of this goal, a range of prevention campaigns have been undertaken – generally with funding from the State – urging pregnant women to abstain from alcohol. Because both risk and protective factors for FASD are intimately connected to the social conditions in which women become pregnant, give birth to and mother their children, FASD prevention campaigns targeting Aboriginal communities suggest possibilities that are both provocative and problematic for advancing movements for social justice, decolonisation and improved maternal and child health. In this essay, I consider how the gendered and racialised legacies of colonisation emerge alongside concerns for improved health and well-being of indigenous children to inform contemporary, state-funded efforts to prevent FASD. In so doing, I examine the ways that neoliberal economic and political trajectories of Canadian state formation intersect with some aspects of decolonisation movements to raise important questions about when, how and under what conditions colonial states support FASD prevention efforts among indigenous peoples.

Keywords:

• births
• indigenous people
• prevention

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Marilyn Van Bibber for generously sharing insights that have shaped my thinking on the issues discussed in this article.

Notes

Notes

1. For a discussion of the politics of ‘counting’ in public health surveillance research, see Mair (this series).

2. In marked contrast to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the British Medical Association (2007) states that ‘the only sensible message for women who are pregnant or planning a pregnancy must be complete abstinence from alcohol’ (p. 31).

3. For discussion of similar means through which mothering ideologies have been employed in public health campaigns targeting environmental tobacco smoke, see Bell (this series). For discussions related to interventions to address childhood obesity, see McNaughton and LeBesco's papers (this series).

4. Fetal alcohol syndrome is one type of FASD, characterised by specific facial features (such as shortened palpebral fissures and a flattened philtrum), low birth weight and slow postnatal growth, organ damage, cognitive impairment and developmental delay.

5. Similar patterns in Aboriginal alcohol policy are evident in Australia. For a complete discussion of alcohol policy in relation to Aboriginal communities in Australia, see Brady (2004).

6. Prior to the 1950s, Aboriginal persons could only drink alcohol legally if they became ‘enfranchised’, formally giving up their treaty rights (or, in the case of BC, rights guaranteed under the Indian Act).

7. It must be emphasised that high rates of problem alcohol use (such as binge drinking, alcohol dependence, drunk driving accidents and fatalities or the development of alcohol-related liver disease) are not distributed evenly among indigenous peoples, First Nations reserves, Inuit communities or Métis settlements. Rather some communities have very high rates, and others have very low (Chandler and Lalonde 1998).