Women Helping Women: Inuit and Innu Women and Participatory Health Workshops in Labrador in the 1980s

Courtney’s project will examine how health workshops led by women for women in Labrador in the 1980s affected Inuit and Innu women. These workshops employed a unique participatory approach that reinforced lived experiences and reciprocity, and recognized that women held expertise about their bodies, and their families’ and communities’ health concerns and needs. Using the sources created by these workshops, and oral accounts of facilitators and participants, this research will contribute an important case study towards the larger historiography on settler-Indigenous relations, the social history of medicine, and gender history, all of which have a gap when it comes to Inuit and Innu women’s health experiences. Courtney will also host a workshop on gender and health in Atlantic Canada and produce an edited collection to encourage research on rural health history.