Our series with NonProfit Quarterly, Community Strategies for Systemic Change, concludes with an essay by the founding directors of the Cihuapactli Collective, a Phoenix-based organizations that offers healing services to urban Indigenous people "from womb to tomb." Nurturing the inextricable links between Native food sovereignty and mothering practices, they argue, supports community, land and spirit, and paves a path to equity and wellbeing. All photos courtsey of Cihuapactli Collective.
The excerpt below was originally published on Nonprofit Quarterly:
Good Medicine: Centering Food Justice Work in Indigenous Maternal Knowledgey
By Enjolie Lafaurie and Maria Parra Cano, Cihuapactli Collective
The Cihuapactli Collective (CC) began seven years ago in Phoenix, Arizona, in response to the call of a mother, CC’s co-executive director, Maria Parra Cano.
The collective took shape two months after Parra Cano gave birth. Her mother had recently passed away, and she was experiencing the baby blues. In response to her call, 14 founding CC members began meeting in coffee shops to discuss healing ourselves. Conversations regarding womb health and parenting in an urban Indigenous setting led to the development of community workshops that centered women’s and partum health. Over time, CC began to be recognized for its work, and the organization expanded to serve BIPOC families in Phoenix from womb to tomb.
During its first three years, CC members focused on healing our tight-knit Native community. Many of us had known one another for decades; we were part of the same community, spiritual, and organizing circles. Now, in our baby making and child rearing years, ancestral knowledge took center stage. Every member brought to the collective cihuapactli, or women’s medicine in the traditional language Nahuatl of the Aztec/Mexica. Just as many of us had done before, we worked in the community and as a community.
We possessed ancestral knowledge from a variety of nations. Most founding members hailed from tribes in the present-day nations of Mexico and Guatemala, such as Mexica/Aztec, Texcocatl, Yaqui/Yoeme, Purepecha, Raramuri, Tarahumara, and Maya. Tribes from Colombia, the Philippines, and the Caribbean were also represented. CC also has members from northern tribes such as O’odham and Lakota. Nearly seven years after its founding, CC has served and represented upwards of 55 Native nations across the globe, while navigating a system that does not always recognize us as being Indigenous enough.
Walking in two worlds
As a nonprofit, CC’s organizational structure was influenced by ceremonial and Indigenous values. Our board of directors and officers draw on CC’s elders’ advisory council in addition to the organization’s founders.
The concept of walking in two worlds—a settler-colonial world and a Native world—is central to CC’s structure. For CC, neither certificates nor government designations are needed to certify the group’s ancestral knowledge. Despite this understanding, the founders—who included stay-at-home moms, social workers, journalists, chefs, and women with doctorate degrees—must negotiate between the two worlds and strategically make decisions regarding how to open doors for the communities we serve.
For its first five years, CC ran largely out of the Parra Cano household. From this location, women and their children filled packages and tote bags with seeds and medicines to mail to the attendees of our annual ancestral womb wellness gathering (AWWG). We created shifts for womb care and massages. As folks walked past the kitchen table on the way to the treatment room in the house, those who lingered laid the foundations for the nonprofit.
The first AAWG, launched with the humble goal of helping us to heal ourselves, attracted over 200 people. This event builds on longstanding community traditions. For years, women would host potlucks and what we call comadre brunches. A comadre—which translates literally into English as co-mother—is a family friend who cares for the family and takes on household chores. When one of us in the community gave birth, we would support the new mother for 40 days in this manner by bringing food. When a baby passed on, we would check on and check in with one another, something so simple, yet elemental.
During founders’ meetings, we discussed how we hoped to define and describe our organization and implement the Indigenous values that so many of us seek to pass on to our offspring. For the first four years, this labor was unpaid; our events were self-funded.
We sensed that mothers and families in our community likely lived with similar experiences to us and similar Indigenous values—and had limited support. The concept of serving families from womb to tomb came to be.
COVID-19 compels change
As it did to so many organizations, the COVID 19 pandemic shifted CC in unexpected ways. It impacted the local food system in South Phoenix, and many food-based businesses faced closure. Maria Parra Cano’s family business was among them.
Prior to the pandemic, the business, Sana Sana Foods, was thriving, with a well-known food truck. Its mission to “feed the people” was well received as the family centered ancestral foods in the vegan Mexican cuisine they served.
Because the Parro Cano family owned Sana Sana Foods and participated in CC, the two entities often collaborated. During the pandemic, they merged in order to attract philanthropic funding and for economic survival. Importantly, their missions overlapped, for food justice and maternal health are connected. And indeed, the benefits of the merger extended far beyond financial survival. Most importantly, the link between food justice, land restoration, and birthing work became readily apparent.
In an ironic development, just as many nonprofits were abandoning physical offices, CC for the first time acquired one. Located in Central Phoenix, the new office also became home to an urban garden.
As we grew herbs for postpartum care, it became clear that food is fundamental to all aspects of healing and that there was a broad public need for this knowledge to be disseminated. As the pandemic raged on, we found that the ancestral earth-based knowledge and Native science that we provided had become practical information and skills that were widely requested by community members and the media.