The result of a ten-year collaboration between Australian and
Samoan researchers and midwives, this book compiles the
first-person stories of several generations of Samoan midwives,
both those who use traditional techniques for home birth and those
who use Western techniques in a hospital. The voices are vivid and
varied, often displaying the Samoan gift for storytelling.
The overall picture of changing birthing practices is complex and
sometimes tinged with ironies. As the introduction says, "These
Samoan nurses and midwives did not immediately attempt to mediate
new and old ways of birthing after the colonial leadership of their
profession left. They themselves became cultural agents for change
as they continued the role of 'colonizing' their own birth
tradition and taught the fa'atosaga Samoan for midwife] Western
techniques, at the same time trying to provide a professional
midwife for all women. Paradoxically they often chose a social
midwife for their own births and supported or at least condoned the
social midwives close to them. . . . Kaisarina, while working as
the leading professional midwife in the country, and working almost
totally in hospital practice herself, simultaneously assisted her
mother-in-law with her social practice of midwifery. Vipulo's story
shows how a professional midwife preferred to have her mother, a
social midwife, deliver her at home."
A particular objective of the authors is to encourage a
reconception of maternity care in countries where professional
services are rare and not available to all women. The book
challenges common assumptions, still held in many postcolonial
countries, that a simple migration of Western-style,
hospital-focused care is necessarily always an achievable or
desirable goal. It also demonstrates the considerable progress that
one group has made in rethinking and developing a model of
maternity care that works within their society and culture. As
these midwives' stories suggest, solutions to some of the problems
caused by gaps in the kinds of resources that Westerners take for
granted can be found in partnerships and cultural wisdom that
already exist in Samoa and, by extension, other developing
countries.
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