Content Warning: This post contains material that includes information that may be triggering.
Violence against Indigenous women has been and continues to be one of the most pervasive effects of settler colonialism, yet is largely untold when it comes to specific points in history. One of these moments is the forced sterilization of Indigenous women. In an effort to create a monotonous, white America, doctors across the country, with funding from the U.S. government, forced, coerced, misled, and threatened Native women to undergo medical procedures. However, these acts of cultural genocide, while having lasting impacts on Indigenous nations across the United States, did not stop Indigenous people, nor did it silence their voices. This post seeks to shed light on what occurred, how Native women resisted, and what the impacts were of forced sterilization.
The forced sterilization of Indigenous women stems from the far too common use of science to justify encroaching on the autonomy of minority groups. One of these “scientific” theories that rose to prominence during the height of the Cold War was eugenics. This theory of cultural cleansing stemmed from the heightened distrust in “others”; that is to say, anyone against capitalism and anyone not of European white descent. And so, in the 1960s and 1970s, those within the Indian Health Service (IHS), along with independent doctors, performed thousands of nonconsensual sterilizations (Calloway, 2019, 503). Physicians used various different ways of manipulation in order to sterilize these women. Many were told that the procedure- either a hysterectomy, tubal ligation, or other, more harmful and illegitimate manners was reversible (Torpy). Some women were forced under threat of their family being harmed. Others would go in for a completely unrelated issue and be tricked into being sterilized. Sterilization also disproportionately was targeted at poorer Indigenous women in particular. This was a result of the eugenicist theories of the time that sought to remove the “impurities” from society. These clear violations against human rights did not go without resistance, however.
In 1974 in Rapid City, South Dakota, Women of All Red Nations (WARN), was founded in response to the building accounts of forced sterilization (Begay). This group, some of whose members were a part of the landmark occupation of the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1973, proved to be pivotal in confronting and dismantling forced sterilization. The group demanded that the government assess the damage against their community. So, in 1976, the U.S. General Accounting Office found that 4 of the 12 Indian Health Service regions sterilized 3,406 Indigenous women without their permission between just a three year span of 1973 and 1976 (National Institute of Health). This number, however, is most likely an underestimate. Many Native women also did not know they had gotten sterilized, as many had already had kids before. An independent study by WARN found that 40%-50% of Native women interviewed had been sterilized (Begay). In response to this, Indigenous women fought back.
Dr. Connie Redbird Pinkerman-Uri was one of the first to realize what was going on. In 1972, she met a 26 year old woman who had a hysterectomy because the doctor told her to since she was an alcoholic at the time. Dr. Pinkerman-Uri of course knew that this was not the common solution to alcoholism and began to realize that sterilizations like this were happening to thousands of Indigenous women (Bataille). She began to conduct surveys and appeared on TV to expose the IHS. In 1977, at the Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Peoples in Geneva, Switzerland, Marie Sanchez, a member of WARN, spoke out on this issue in a passionate speech, appropriately describing sterilization as a “genocide”. In that same year, two articles, “The Theft of Life” (Jarvis) and “Killing Our Future: Sterilization and Experiments” (Akwesasne Notes, March 1977), were published in the Akwesasne Notes, the largest Indigenous run newspaper at the time. The authors of these articles put the IHS on blast for huge numbers of people to see. The scathing closing remarks in “Killing Our Future[…]” reads: “While the IHS seemingly has funds to sterilize thousands of native women, its funds for real health care are severely limited”. Through WARN and other Indigenous women’s continuous contributions in political activism, regulations on sterilization in 1979. These regulations included the requirement of informed consent, the banning of hysterectomies, and the ceasing of targeting Indigenous communities.
While this was a major and necessary win for Indigenous women in America, the effects of this attempted genocide were seen. Population data determined that the birth rate of Indigenous women went from 3.7 in the 1970s to 1.8 children in the 1980s, as compared to 2.42 to 2.14 white women (Lawrence). This event has played a part in the way the IHS is viewed. With this massive violation in reproductive rights, Indigenous communities began to make their own, self run organizations such as the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center (NAWHERC) in 1988. This is one of the many examples of how Indigenous groups have not only successfully resisted infringement of sovereignty, but also have strengthened themselves because of it.
Bibliography
Bataille, Gretchen M., and Laurie Lisa. “Pinkerman-Uri, Connie Redbird.” Essay. In Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, 243–43. New York: Routledge, 2001. https://books.google.com/books?id=9eaSAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq#v=onepage&q &f=false.
Begay, Jobaa Yazzie. “Women of All Red Nations.” Indigenous Goddess Gang, July 22, 2019.https://www.indigenousgoddessgang.com/matriarch-monday/2019/7/22/women-of-all-red-nations.
Calloway, Colin. “Protecting Women’s Reproductive Rights.” Essay. In First Peoples A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, 503–4. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, Macmillan Learning, 2019.
Cobb, Daniel M., and Marie Sanchez. “‘Why Have You Not Recognized Us As Sovereign People Before?”.” Essay. In Say We Are Nations Documents of Politics and Protest in Indigenous America since 1887, 176–83. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
Fibonacci Blue. Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women’s March. February 14, 2017. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/44550450@N04/32778542291.
Lawrence, Jane. “The Indian Health Service and the Sterilization of Native American Women.” The American Indian Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2000): 400–419. https://doi.org/10.1353/aiq.2000.0008.
Mark Jarvis, Gayle. “The Theft of Life.” Akwesasne Notes 9, no. 4 (September 1977): 30–30. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/Ayer_Akwesasne_Notes_1977_09Sep/15.
National Institutes of Health, Health & Human Services. “Government Admits Forced Sterilization of Indian Women – Timeline – Native Voices.” U.S. National Library of Medicine. National Institutes of Health. Accessed November 18, 2021. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/543.html.
NAWHERC. “History.” Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center. Accessed November 19, 2021. https://www.nativeshop.org/about-us.html.
Torpy, Sally J. “Native American Women and Coerced Sterilization: On the Trail of Tears in the 1970s.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, January 22, 2000.
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/php-programs/centers/crrj/zotero/loadfile.php?entity_key=QFDB5M W3.
Unknown Author. “Killing Our Future: Sterilization and Experiments.” Awkesasne Notes 9, no. 1 (March 1977): 4. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/Ayer_Akwesasne_Notes_1977_03Spr/2.
