A New Native American Women’s Health Book

A wonderful example of our open copyright in practice recently arrived at the office—a new adaptation of one of our women’s health books, called JourneyWoman: A Native Woman's Guide to Wellness, which used Where Women Have No Doctor for content and illustrations.

This beautiful health resource was produced by the Women's Wellness Program at NARA (Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest) Indian Health Clinic. Founded in 1970, NARA NW is an Indian-owned, Indian-operated non-profit agency, originally focused on outpatient substance abuse. They now operate a residential family treatment center, an outpatient treatment center, a family resource program, and a primary health care clinic with a Women's Wellness Program (WWP) that provides women's health services to the urban Indian women of Portland, Oregon and surrounding towns. All NARA’s services are centered on the family, its philosophy being “without the family circle there will be no future.”

The JourneyWoman guide began when the Women’s Wellness Program conducted over 30 in-depth interviews with women served by the program, to gain a better understanding of barriers to wellness for Native women. This project was called "Voices," and revealed barriers such as historical trauma leading to mistrust in the health care system, misunderstandings about and fear of health procedures and disease, and lack of a "native look" to health awareness materials. A major recommendation from "Voices" was the creation of women's health materials that were designed for Native women with a Native look. The women said they wanted one resource that brought together information on many women's health issues, not separate pamphlets for various health concerns. In 2006, The WWP received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Choctaw Nation and Siletz Confederated Tribes to gather more community input and design a Native women's health manual. WWP staff conducted five focus groups with women from three area tribes. Women leaders in the community spread the word that NARA was creating this book, and stories, artwork and wellness tips were submitted for inclusion in the manual.

When samples of different manuals were evaluated by the focus groups, Where Women Have No Doctor was chosen by all of them as the best model in terms of reading level and layout for the Native women's manual. And while initially the manual was to focus on breast and cervical cancer, each focus group recommended a comprehensive view of women's health with personalized stories of Native women's experience with a range of wellness issues. The result is "JourneyWoman: A Native Woman's Guide to Wellness". The first edition of 4000 copies of JourneyWoman was printed in 2007and are being distributed to women who come to the clinic for their annual women’s exams, and also to Native organizations throughout the country. The WWP says they have received amazing feedback from both urban and rural Native communities on the usefulness of this manual.

Many of the women involved in the development of the manual continue to volunteer their time to help give guidance to this project. The WWP hopes to create a Native Women's Council to help continue the journey and to seek funding for a second edition of JourneyWoman: A Native Woman's Guide to Wellness.

Free Dr. Binayak Sen!

We wrote about the unjust imprisonment of Dr. Binayak Sen in an earlier blog. This past weekend, Hesperian staff joined with a number of local students, academics, and members of the Indian community to confront one of the Indian officials most responsible for Sen’s continued imprisonment, Mr. Vishwa Ranjan, the Director General of the Police in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh.

Ranjan was in town to speak at a University of California-Berkeley seminar on Justice and the Law in India. Instead of enjoying a quiet presentation to accompany a vacation-like shopping spree, he was greeted by about 100 well-organized and well-informed people asking hard questions about a situation in which the denial of human rights has become endemic. A state of “low-intensity war” is claiming hundreds of lives in this part of India.

For Hesperian, the echoes from Central America of the targeting of health workers by the military and death squads were all too familiar. Just as in Central America in the 70s and 80s, dozens of mostly indigenous (or “tribal” as they say in India) villages have been burnt to the ground in a campaign of scorched earth and their inhabitants driven into concentration camps. A “self-defense” organization called Salwa Judum has been created by the government and the military, and armed to fight the Maoist insurgents (known as Naxalites) operating in the area. Just as with the “civil patrols” in Central America, these groups have no structures by which they can be held accountable for the murder and mayhem which they wreak upon any individuals or villages considered not sufficiently anti-communist.

The Director General gave a presentation in which he asserted the independent nature of the Salwa Judum, even though Human Rights Watch has released a report proving exactly the opposite. He also claimed that the human rights organizations and other NGOs were creations of the insurgent movement to further their anti-government aims. These kinds of irresponsible charges are incredibly dangerous for health, development, and human rights workers.

When pressed during the question and answer session about exactly of what crime Dr. Binayak Sen was accused, DG Ranjan first refused to answer “because the case was still going on.” Finally he stated Dr. Sen was being held because he gave “logistic support to the Maoists.” He did not say whether that meant providing food to the hungry, medicines to the sick, or education or training around health issues, activities in which Binayak Sen has been active for years among the poorest of the poor in Chhattisgarh.

Through our work in producing materials that can be used by people who are denied the right to health, Hesperian often comes in contact with committed health workers like Binayak Sen who are, like the people they live among and work with, all too often the target of human rights violations and violence. We join with Amnesty International and host of organizations in India and throughout the world calling for his release. Learn more about his case and how you can help.