Your period—or Moon Time—contains multitudes. Your menstrual cycle can, at once, be a time of pain, discomfort, reflection, connection, and self-discovery.
Indigenous-led period equity organization, Moon Time Connections (MTC), is all about accommodating the range of period experiences, ceremony, and essentials that are so often overlooked in Northern Indigenous Communities.
From pads to period underwear, pain relief, and educational programming, their work aims to decolonize the menstrual equity space by centering Indigenous ways of knowing—including cultural practices and perspectives surrounding periods.
Rather than treating products as a one-in-all solution to the scarcity of menstrual care facing Community, they ask questions, conduct research, provide educational resources, and look to Indigenous leaders for Community-based solutions.
A recipient of the Knix Fund’s first round of grants, to date, Moon Time Connections has facilitated the distribution of millions of period products across schools, organizations, shelters, and community centers in remote areas from coast to coast to coast.
Most recently, the organization has partnered with Food Banks Canada to foster greater access to menstrual education and products among those in northern and remote Communities.
Ahead, I chat with the Ontario Chapter Lead and Co-education Director, Veronica Brown, about the organization’s exciting new project, why pain relief is central to menstrual equity, and how periods can foster moments of cultural connection.
Congrats on your recent pilot project and funding initiative—tell me about some of the work you’re currently doing.
Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) has been consulting with us and many other period equity organizations for the last couple of years. From that consultation they came up with a menstrual equity pilot. Food Banks Canada was awarded funding as the national organization to run the pilot which has two prongs to it.
The first prong is the distribution of menstrual products and the second prong is education. We applied to Food Banks Canada for funding for our education program but as with any programming or funding, we were frequently checking in and asking “what's going on in the north? What does distribution look like in the north? We have a lot of really deep rooted relationships with northern Communities. What can we do to support this?”
MTC originally received funding under the education prong to upscale our educational programming. But because of our strong connection with Community and experience shipping to remote and northern areas of the country, Food Banks Canada applied for supplemental funding to establish Moon Time Connections as a pilot location servicing the North.
WAGE Canada provided $2.4 million of additional funding to purchase period products for Moon Time Connections to distribute across the country to the 160 Northern partners we currently support.
We are able to offer not only disposable pads and tampons, but also reusable products like period underwear and cloth pads. We strive to offer the full spectrum of products because part of period equity is the dignity of choice.
We’re so excited to be able to offer period underwear as it’s an amazing reusable product option that also supports oral traditions around Moon Time and is often cost prohibitive. Since we’ve been able to offer period underwear, it’s become our second most requested item.
Your organization focuses on many of the material barriers facing Northern Indigenous Communities, but you also focus a lot on education. What role does education play in menstrual equity?
Education is integral to period equity. It’s crucial for all menstruators to understand their bodies, understand menstruation, what’s typical, and when to seek medical help. It’s also crucial for non-menstruators; education is key to removing the stigma around periods.
When we received funding to develop our training program, the first thing we did was send a poll to the Communities we work with—because we work with Community and we work for Community. We weren't going to build an education program from what we thought people needed. We really wanted to make sure the topics we're covering are coming from the voice of Community.
The number one thing that came back around education was pain management, which was really surprising to us. That also links to the findings of our research paper, which holds that 65% of Northern Indigenous respondents don't have access to pain relief medication.
So, we focused on partnering with different organizations, like the Endometriosis Network of Canada and partnered with Happy Pelvis. Last week I spoke at an event at a book release for a doctor that focuses on PCOS. We're going to meet in the next month to add PCOS into our presentations.
We work to provide awareness around why we have our Moon Time and what to expect when we get our first Moon Time. We talk about period tracker apps, as well. We also talk about how to support youth who have disabilities and are getting their period. We talk about how to support trans, Two-Spirit, and non-binary menstruators.
We are very much Indigenizing menstrual education. Our program provides a base knowledge, but we talk about traditional medicine practices that the facilitators can then implement into the training. If you, say, have an Anishinaabe facilitator, they can take the teachings from their specific Nation and embed that into the presentations.
If they have smudging or if they have certain ceremonies around their Moon Time, then there's space for them to implement that knowledge. We wanted to create a base foundation that is still Indigenized, but gives space for Nation-specific resources to be implemented.
We are now working with different trusted Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and Medicine People from all of the different Nations to create videos for each of their own Nations.
So, if somebody is not able to have an Elder or Knowledge Keeper come and talk about the ceremonies or the practices or the traditional medicine that are from their specific Nation, we can then share a video to help bridge the gap of traditional knowledge or the awareness of traditional knowledge that has been created by colonization.
When we look at colonization, there's a big gap around traditional knowledge. A lot of that went underground, a lot of it was really hidden. What we're trying to do is revitalize that as much as we can.
We're also translating our lessons into different traditional languages. So really bringing back the traditional knowledge in terms of language as well.
As you mentioned, research points to major barriers in accessing period pain relief in Northern Indigenous Communities. Do you think that's a vital part of moving towards menstrual equity?
That's a really deep question. Overall, access to pain relief should be considered just as much a part of menstrual equity as accessing products; caring for one’s menstrual health is multifaceted.
From a Western perspective, we view our health through a different lens. We need a diagnosis and we need to know what disease you have, how can we treat it? Is there a medication that we can give you to support you? Is there a surgery that you can have to help rid that?
I was just sitting with a very beautiful spirit. She is Ojibwe and Oneida, and she's taught me a lot about pain in women's bodies and how we hold on to a lot of trauma and pain in our lives because we are the caregivers of our Community.
Oftentimes, from Indigenous teachings and specifically teachings from her, when we hold onto this trauma and we hold onto this pain, it develops in different ways in our body.
When she was young, she went through a lot of trauma and she was at home in bed with a lot of debilitating menstrual pain. She always said, I'm happy for my Moon Time pain because I didn't have to go into the educational institution that abused me.
After she went through her healing and worked with different Medicine People—she let go of that trauma and pain—her cramps stopped. There's definitely a physical aspect to our pain, but there's also a psychological aspect to our pain.
We can look at traditional medicines and healing to help with that, and pair that with endometriosis and PCOS diagnosis. It's been really interesting sitting with different Matriarchs and getting non-Western perspectives around our bodies, and around healing and pain.
When we talk about the work that we do, it's deep. We are not doctors, so we can't give diagnoses. We can't give medication. That's not something that we offer. But we do offer hot water bottles and heating pads because we know that those are not really available in the North.
When those are requested, we send them up and we use our voice as much as we can to advocate for issues around women's health, and around Two-Spirit and trans health—and what that looks like in terms of lack of research.
When we talk about access to menstrual products, we almost always talk about access to pain relief as well, because that's a big thing that came out of our report. Those two things together define menstrual equity.
It's not just products, it's not just education. It's being able to take care of yourself during menstruation. Part of that is being able to manage pain.
Nearly half of Indigenous respondents in remote Communities report feeling connected to themselves and other women during their Moon Time. Can you tell me more about these feelings of connectedness?
We wanted to really focus—not just on what don't you have—but what does Moon Time really mean to you? How do you feel around it? How does it connect you to your auntie, your grandmother, your mother, and to the other women and menstruators in your life?
In our facilitator training at the very beginning, we always ask everyone: what is one word to describe your Moon Time? And it's usually painful, uncomfortable, and messy.
Every once in a while we get a ‘sacred’ and ‘connecting.’ Then we go through our training and we ask it again at the very end—what's one word to describe your Moon Time?
It’s the polar opposite from day one. It's like ‘beautiful,’ ‘connected,’ ‘sacred,’ ‘honoring,’ and ‘life giving.’ Through our training, we also wanted to say, let's sit and have a reflection here about what this looks like and how this feels for you.
Because when we have conversations and we have different perspectives from different Matriarchs, we hear that people are honoring their bodies and their Moon Times and they do find it sacred.
We want to make sure that we are giving space for that reflection. The more we can have that conversation, the more we can see that perspective grow around connection.
When we talk about oral traditions and that connection with Grandmother Moon—not every nation has that connection or that oral tradition—but we wanted to at least give that opportunity for reflection. How does your Moon Time bring you back to your culture?
A lot of people don't put those two things together, so how can we feel connected with ourselves, but also feel connected with culture and Community during our Moon Time.