Awards

• Short-listed for University of Regina/University of Saskatchewan Jennifer Welsh Scholarly Writing Award Saskatchew 2022 (Canada)
• Short-listed for University of Regina/University of Saskatchewan Jennifer Welsh Scholarly Writing Award Saskatchewan Book Awards 2022 (Canada)

Overview

Collective Care provides an ethnographic account of urban Indigenous life and caregiving practices in the face of Saskatchewan's HIV epidemic. Based on a five-year study conducted in partnership with AIDS Saskatoon, the book focuses on the contrast between Indigenous values of collective kin-care and non-Indigenous models of intensive maternal care. It explores how women and men negotiate the forces of HIV to render motherhood a site of cultural meaning, personal and collective well-being, and, sometimes, individual and community despair. It also introduces readers to how HIV is Indigenized in western Canada and how all HIV-affected and -infected mothers must negotiate this cultural and racialized terrain. Featuring in-depth narrative interviews, notes from participant observation in AIDS Saskatoon's drop-in centre, and a photovoice component, this book offers an accessible account of an engaged anthropologist's work with a community that is both vulnerable and resilient. Each chapter begins with an ethnographic vignette that introduces central concepts, including medical anthropology, syndemics, kinship, and Indigeneity, with the overall aim of humanizing those affected by HIV in western Canada and beyond.

Full Product Details

9781487587635

Table of Contents

Reviews

Collective Care contributes to our understanding of Indigenous family life and the lives of those affected by HIV/AIDS. Because the book focuses on family relationships and care in a context that is somewhat familiar to students, yet different from more frequently studied communities with HIV/AIDS. This book will be a useful tool for teaching. - William McKellin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia By sharing perspectives that are often ignored, this work provides important insight not found elsewhere. The reliance on the words of Indigenous women is a wonderful example of the kind of allyship we have been calling for. Rather than speaking for the women, Pamela J. Downe has created a literary space where they can speak for themselves. The truth of their stories comes through in vibrant quotes about loving and raising children in a collective way. - Dawn Lavell-Harvard, Director of the First Peoples House of Learning, Trent University, and former President of the Native Women's Association of Canada

Author Information

Pamela J. Downe is an associate professor in the Department of Archaeology & Anthropology at the University of Saskatchewan and past-president of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA).

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