Mortified about menstruation? Some Indigenous youth learn to celebrate it instead [Video]

The spring equinox has just passed, but Cutcha Risling Baldy’s summer schedule is already looking jam-packed, as youth from her Hupa community prepare to celebrate something their tween peers may be apprehensive about or even avoid discussing: their first period.

Risling Baldy has helped foster the resurgence of the Hupa Flower Dance, a ceremony honouring the start of menstruation. Her daughter, who took part a few years ago, belongs to a new generation openly talking about and thinking of menstruation in a positive light. 

Revived by a group of Hupa women, the Flower Dance is a rite of passage that celebrates, guides and empowers young menstruators as they begin their transition into adulthood. 

Not celebrated openly for more than 100 years, “now, it’s such a part of our existence and our lives we couldn’t imagine a world without it,” the associate professor of Native American studies at California State Polytechnic …