Collective Care: Indigenous Motherhood, Family, and HIV/AIDS by Pamela J. Downe

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

Reviewed by: Collective Care: Indigenous Motherhood, Family, and HIV/AIDS by Pamela J. Downe Caroline Fidan Tyler Doenmez (bio) Collective Care: Indigenous Motherhood, Family, and HIV/AIDS by Pamela J. Downe University of Toronto Press, 2021 despite the robust body of research addressing various dimensions of HIV/AIDS, very little has been written about the families impacted by this epidemic. Pamela Downe’s Collective Care endeavors to fill this gap and counter the presumption that motherhood and HIV/AIDS are “irreconcilable categories” (34). The ethnography is animated by the question: “What does it mean to be a mother in the context of HIV/AIDS?” (3) Downe responds to this inquiry in five substantive chapters that draw on narrative-style interviews and participant observation research, emerging out of a collaborative project that she undertook with People Who Access Services (PWAS) at an organization called AIDS Saskatoon. A unique methodological dimension of the text is a “photovoice” project, in which participants took pictures to reflect “what it means to be a parent in the context of HIV/AIDS in Saskatchewan” (15). In the opening section, Downe thoughtfully accounts for her positionality as a non-Indigenous anthropologist, addressing her commitments to Indigenous rights and decolonizing research. Throughout the book, she foregrounds the voices and stories of her Indigenous participants to develop her central claim that collective care is a vital form of mothering for women living with HIV/AIDS and a “cultural touchstone” that sustains community bonds and ensures the well-being of children (viii). The author shows how this form of kinship challenges widely accepted Euro-North American concepts of family roles, exceeding biological definitions of parenthood and involving a wide array of figures who assume caregiving responsibilities for one another. She highlights how collective care is often misperceived as negligent, irresponsible, and unmotherly by the public and various institutional figures, including teachers, police, and social workers. Against this stigma, collective care endures as an invaluable source of support and belonging for families living with HIV/AIDS. Saskatchewan has the highest rates of HIV/AIDS of any province in Canada and Indigenous people—specifically women of child-bearing age—are vastly overrepresented in these numbers. Downe is emphatic that the epidemic is a product of state-sanctioned and structural violence, asserting: “In Saskatchewan, the forced disruption and dislocation of Indigenous societies underpins the HIV virus, disease and death” (14). She engages syndemic theory to argue [End Page 133] that HIV/AIDS is not a stand-alone issue but rather intimately interrelated with other health conditions, including the hepatitis C virus, injection drug use, and opioid addiction, all of which are driven by the legacies and ongoing impacts of settler colonial dispossession and intergenerational trauma. One of these persistent forms of colonial violence that Downe examines is the devastating trend of Indigenous child removal by social workers. Her chapters chronicle how parents and caregivers live with the pervasive threat of losing their children and how they are constantly subjected to the expectation of parental failure by virtue of their addictions or diagnoses. Through the stories of her participants, she provides critical documentation of these women’s experiences of having their children removed, illustrating the punitive, exhausting, and deleterious effects of this system of child welfare. As one participant stated: “All of us Aboriginal moms, all of us HIV moms, we live with this nightmare all the time” (25). Her interlocutors’ narratives reveal how their perceived shortcomings as parents often result from their involvement in collective care-giving networks that are misinterpreted as “neglectful” by authorities. Moreover, Downe argues that there is “a colonizing nature to the politics of individualistic motherhood” (54) in that those who are regarded as deviating from this norm are subjected to increased scrutiny and judgment. She deftly demonstrates that this damaging stigma does not correspond to the reality of her participants’ dedication to raising, protecting, and nurturing their children. Collective Care unsettles dominant assumptions about motherhood, family, and care, detailing how these culturally specific understandings are socially and historically situated. This provocation prompts readers to interrogate deeply ingrained notions of what constitutes worthy parenthood and a desirable family unit. The book invites further scholarly attention to the ways in...