‘We feel really empowered,’ says new mom Brittany Pennell after smudging at IKW Health Centre
As It Happens: 6:01
Nurse performs Halifax hospital’s 1st smudging ceremony — for her sister’s baby
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Nurse Courtney Pennell gets goosebumps whenever she thinks about performing her hospital’s first-ever smudging ceremony on her twin sister and newborn nephew. Pennell is the Indigenous health consultant at IWK Health Centre in Halifax. For years, she has been advocating for the hospital to allow smudging for Indigenous mothers and their babies.
That policy finally came into effect last month — just in time for the arrival of Beau Joseph Bear Pennell. “It’s hard to choke back the tears,” Pennell told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
Indigenous mothers, newborns can now be smudged at Halifax children’s hospital
WATCH | Halifax hospital’s 1st Mi’kmaw smudging ceremony: Duration 3:20
Meet the Mi’kmaw health consultant who advocated for change at the IWK, and then got to smudge her own twin sister and new nephew under the new policy.
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Pennell personally performed the Mi’kmaw smudging ceremony for her twin sister, Brittany Pennell, and her baby Beau, inside the hospital last month, both during and after the birth. “Knowing that the policies and procedures were published just days before Beau came into the world was like he had been kissed by Creator and chosen to be the first Mi’kmaw baby to be smudged at birth,” Brittany Pennell told CBC News as she held Beau in her arms.
“We feel really empowered.”
What is smudging, and why is it so important?
Smudging is the practice of burning sacred herbs such as sage, cedar, sweetgrass and tobacco. It has ties to several Indigenous nations and communities, but the specifics vary between different cultures.
“It means a variety of things to a variety of different people and a multitude of different ways,” Courtney said. “But mostly, it’s like grounding and a reclamation of culture and traditions, and it connects us to Mother Earth and our ancestors and the Creator.”
She says it’s something her family does daily.
For this ceremony, Courtney burned the herbs in the hospital room and fanned them over her sister and nephew from head to toe. “When you do it, you’re asking to see good things and hear good things and speak good things, and your hands to create and conduct yourself in a good way,” she said. “So it really is about manifesting the good things and ridding anything toxic that’s surrounding you and your environment.”
‘It takes a village’
Courtney says it was a 10-year-process to get the new policy in place, and involved input from fire marshals, safety co-ordinators, environmental officials and more. “It takes a village really, and great advocacy and allyship and demonstration, patience, time, education [and] the willingness to be open … to experiencing what it entails,” she said.
To alleviate concerns the smoke would set off fire alarms, the hospital agreed to shut them off just for the duration of the ceremony. “Safety is, of course, always No. 1,” Courtney said. “But we’ve been doing this since time immemorial.”
The new policy, she says, mandates all staff to try and facilitate a smudging ceremony when requested.
Several other hospitals in Canada allow for smudging ceremonies, and Courtney says she’s hoping the new policy will pave the way for other Indigenous mothers in Halifax.
“We just shouldn’t be saying no anymore,” she said. “My wish for, like, Mi’kmaw and Indigenous people in particular, is that if smudging is important to you in the way that it has been for me and many other families and my own family, you shouldn’t take no for an answer.”
It’s especially important to incorporate these cultural practices into maternal health-care, she says, in light of the myriad of injustices Indigenous mothers have faced in Canada. Those include birth alerts, forced sterilization, and having their children taken away and sent to residential schools for forced assimilation, or put into the child welfare system.
“It’s a real big step in reconciliation and the restorative process and allowing us our own inherent rights,” she said.
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Brittany fought back tears when describing what it meant to have her twin sister perform the ceremony for her and Beau. “It makes it so much more impactful, and I’m so proud of her. We’re so proud of her for all the hard work and all the fight and the dedication that she puts in and the work. She’s our medicine and our family as well,” she said.
“To watch her so dedicated in her role, for the ways of our people to be brought back and reclaim our roots, it’s for tens of thousands of other Mi’kmaw people, not just us.”
Interview with Courtney Pennell produced by Magan Carty. With files from CBC Nova Scotia