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.

About the Author
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).

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



Book Information
ISBN 9781487587635
Author Pamela Downe
Format Paperback
Page Count 176
Imprint University of Toronto Press
Publisher University of Toronto Press
Weight(grams) 260g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 9mm