Native American Women Snap Up Health Book

Building Women's Advocacy Skills

"What we're trying to do is provide information so women have it at their fingertips, whether they're an individual or working in a health program, to help build advocacy skills for women so they aren't such passive players in the examining room," Asetoyer says.

Among the book's indigenous authors: Sarah Littlecrow-Russell (Anishaabe), a family law attorney and health activist in Amherst, Mass., wrote on Native American nutrition and weight loss, including recommendations of eating traditional foods such as wild turnips, yams and chokecherries; Willy Dolphus (Cheyenne River Sioux), a Cheyenne River Reservation-based victim advocate with the South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault, reported on domestic violence, noting such acts were traditionally rare and severely sanctioned in Native American culture before European settlement of the country; Austin, Texas-based midwife Patricia Ann Salas (Chicana-Coahuilteca) detailed midwifery and how traditional midwives helped maintain the emotional and mental stability of the mother throughout pregnancy.

Charon Asetoyer (Photo courtesy of Women's eNews)

In a chapter on smoking, contributor Renee Bartocquteh (Eastern Band Tsalagi, North Carolina) wrote that pure tobacco was harvested traditionally for religious and medicinal purposes and never intended for daily or recreational use. Now, according to a Jan. 31 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 40 percent of Native Americans and Alaska natives smoke, the highest percentage of U.S. ethnic groups surveyed from 1999 to 2001. The chapter says Native American women start smoking earlier than other ethnic groups.

"It is all about addressing barriers, whether it's what a birth control method offers you or doesn't offer you, where online resources are to help you," says Maczen-Cantrell. "There's a beautiful chapter dedicated to traditional knowledge, herbs and healing wisdom, and all of those combined really help build up a woman's confidence in herself, in her life. I have a daughter, and three nieces. I look at them and think, 'this is perfect.'"

Suzanne Batchelor has written on health and medicine for Medscape, CBS Healthwatch and the Texas Medical Association's "Healthline Texas," and for the national science series "Earth and Sky."

For more information, visit
Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center: http://www.nativeshop.org/