Our Story

Butterfly Health and Lifeways Teachings was born out of both necessity and love for our communities. It was co-founded by Indigenous women from different tribal nations across Montana who recognized the power and responsibility of bringing our voices, teachings, and leadership into reproductive health conversations that shape our lives.

In Montana’s reproductive health advocacy spaces, we saw an opportunity for deeper Indigenous leadership and representation. We knew our communities carried knowledge shaped by lived experience, cultural teachings, and generations of understanding around body sovereignty. Long before colonization, teachings about reproductive health were not separated from daily life — they were woven into our cultural lifeways, carried through ceremony, story, kinship, and community responsibility. That understanding continues to guide our work today.

Our work is rooted in restoring balance. Before colonization, our communities were guided by relationships between women and men, across generations, and among all our relatives who carried responsibility for teaching, healing, and care. Leadership was shared, shaped by respect and accountability, with the understanding that how we lived, taught, and cared for one another would determine the wellbeing of those yet to come. Colonial systems disrupted these relationships, creating imbalances that continue to affect our communities today.

While Butterfly Health and Lifeways Teachings was founded by Indigenous women, we walk this work alongside Indigenous men, Two-Spirit, and gender-diverse relatives, honoring the many ways leadership lives among us. By returning to balanced ways of leading and learning, we are practicing our responsibilities to future generations, ensuring they inherit not only knowledge, but healthy relationships, cultural grounding, and the teachings that will carry them forward. This work is a return to what has always sustained us.

As Indigenous people, we know we are not a monolith. Montana is home to many distinct tribal nations, each with its own teachings, protocols, and relationships to reproductive health. That diversity is a strength. It means our approaches are layered, nuanced, and rooted in place. We believe reproductive justice must reflect that richness.

So we created our own space.

A space where Indigenous voices lead.
A space where culture and reproductive justice are not separated.
A space where our people can speak freely, learn together, and strengthen one another.

In our first year, we focused on building Indigenous-led spaces grounded in cultural knowledge, teachings, and community care; spaces that reconnect reproductive health to the lifeways our ancestors practiced, that we currently practice and continue to pass down. Through gatherings, trainings, and youth-centered programming, we helped restore conversations that honor our bodies as sacred and our teachings as essential.

Over the past year, our direction has become even clearer. Reproductive justice is not just about access to care. It is about restoring cultural knowledge, uplifting Indigenous leadership, and ensuring our communities shape the conversations that affect our bodies and futures. It is about teaching with a cultural lens. It is about carrying our lifeways forward.

We are still growing. We are still listening. We are still learning from the communities we serve across Montana.

And one thing is certain: when Indigenous women create space for Indigenous communities, something powerful happens. We build leadership. We build healing. We build futures rooted in our own strength.