It’s day one of the Reproductive Justice reel camp and we are settling into our home for the next week, Ka Waiwai. It’s a smaller camp than last week’s Environmental Justice one and it’s also our first hybrid camp, with a few participants sharing space with us in person and other folks tuning in from home.
We start off with introductions and are sure to pass the laptop around one by one so we can introduce ourselves both to the people in the room and to people on Zoom.
After going through community agreements as a group, we launched into the presentation on reproductive justice lead by Tanya Smith-Johnson of Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition of Hawaiʻi and Grace Caligtan of Planned Parenthood Hawaiʻi.
Tanya and Grace walked us through the origins of the term ‘reproductive justice,’ which was coined by 12 Black women at a conference in Chicago in June 1994, as well as how the genesis of reproductive justice is firmly grounded in the history of Black women in the U.S. as commodities, property, and birthers during the earliest years of colonization and enslavement and how they came out of that with a desire to ensure more agency over their bodies.
They reminded us that reproductive justice comes from this lineage but that “this lineage stretches across the Pacific,” and that we also have similar issues and traumatic histories with colonizing nations trying to rule our bodies in Oceania as well, including how our bodies interact with land, culture, and each other.
After the presentation, we launched into a brief overview of camera work by Vera and then straight into hands-on practice with Inez and a walk-through of cameras’ functions lead by Jessie for folks who were tuning in remotely.
The day ended with photos and laughter. So looking forward to what this week brings.