Katsi Cook – Matrilineal World-Making: Embracing for Impact
Bioneers | Published: May 6, 2025 IndigeneityWomen's Leadership Video
Katsi Cook has, for 5 decades, been a visionary leader in the defense of Indigenous women’s health, from her groundbreaking environmental research tackling PCB contamination among her people, to helping solidly reestablish traditional Indigenous midwifery in North America, to founding and/or running a number of significant organizations. Katsi’s latest mission as leader of the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program is to elevate the lives, voices, and dreams of Indigenous elder women who desire to intentionally transfer their knowledge and experience to younger women. She shares stories of some of these remarkable women and what they can teach us about the Sacred Cycle of Life, covering such topics as the regeneration of Indigenous lifeways, ancestral healing, the world-building biocultural characteristics of matrilineal descent and rematriation, and addressing the maternity care crisis in Indian Country through kinship connection.
This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.
Tekatsi:tsia’kwa Katsi Cook (Wolf Clan member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation), an Onkwehonweh traditional midwife, lifelong advocate of Indigenous midwifery and Native women’s health throughout the life-cycle (drawing from the longhouse traditionalist teaching that “woman Is the first environment”), is Executive Director of the Spirit Aligned Leadership Program. Her work over many decades has spanned a range of worlds and disciplines at the intersections of environmental reproductive health and justice, research, and policy. Katsi’s groundbreaking environmental research of Mohawk mother’s milk revealed the intergenerational impact of industrial chemicals on the health of her community, and she is a major figure in a movement of matrilineal awareness and “rematriation” in Native life.
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