Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

March 22, 2023

California: The State of Genocide and Forced Sterilizations of Native People


Floyd Red Crow Westerman

 

California: The State of Genocide and Forced Sterilizations of Native People

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

Floyd Westerman, shortly before he passed, announced his plan for a series of films on the genocide of Native people. Floyd said he planned to begin in California, exposing the mission, gold mines, and attempts to exterminate Native people, and then continue east to produce this series.

The first of these films was completed before Floyd passed.

'Native american Holocaust -- Exterminate Them! The California Story,' documents the holocaust committed against the native people of California by the state and federal governments. Floyd reveals the bullets, smallpox blankets, kidnapping of Native children, and oppressive concentration camps, carried out by California and the United States government in this attempt at extermination.

'Native american Holocaust -- Exterminate Them! The California Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwgopN9lFpg

Westerman showed the film, still a work in progress, at the Indigenous Border Summit in San Xavier, Tohono Oodham Nation, in 2006, the year before he passed to the Spirit World. 

The film describes the militia who collected bounties. They were paid by the state and federal governments for Indian scalps and Indian heads. It describes how smallpox blankets were supplied by the army and were given to California Natives. In boarding schools, children were forbidden from speaking their language, in an attempt to erase their identities and culture.

Floyd shares the moral challenge, and the healing needed because of this holocaust. He shares the fact that the people survived with their connection with the earth and the universe.

Sterilization: Modern-day Genocide in California

Now, the state of California is beginning reparations for its modern-day genocide, reparations to women who were sterilized without their consent in state facilities.

Native women were sterilized without their consent in California, in both state facilities and IHS facilities. During the era of relocation and termination, 1953 -- 1969, Native people were relocated from their homelands to California and other states, during the process of seizing their lands.

"There were four relocation sites in California: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland, as well as the cities of Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Dallas, and Denver. Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area were designated as vocational training centers. Thousands of Indians were moved off reservations to the cities in an effort to force assimilation," Standford Medicine reports.

Native women who were victims told Censored News this act of genocide was carried out by IHS doctors, and IHS contract doctors in California.

In the 1970s, doctors in the United States sterilized an estimated 25 to 42 percent of Native American women of childbearing age, some as young as 15.

LA Progressive reports on the current reparations and the online portal for survivors of state-sponsored forced or unknown sterilization.

Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, Choctaw/Cherokee, found that one in four American Indian women had been sterilized without her consent nationwide. PInkerton-Uri’s research indicated that the Indian Health Service had “singled out full-blooded Indian women for sterilization procedures.”

Jean Whitehorse, Dine'

Jean Whitehorse, Dine', was one of the victims of relocation to California, and later of sterilization at IHS in Gallup, New Mexico. Before, that there was boarding school. In boarding school, she was given a number and was referred to by a number, not a name. She couldn't even speak with her brother. There were no visits home.

Jean said she was sent to the San Francisco Bay Area at the age of 19 on relocation to Oakland. After four years, she decided it was time to go home to the Navajo Nation.

Jean described how she was a victim of the United States government, first as a young child forbidden to speak Dine' in boarding school, and then a victim of forced sterilization.

These forced sterilizations were carried out by the Indian Health Service, and many times without the knowledge of Native American women, she said.

Jean said she was treated for an illness at the Gallup, N.M., IHS hospital, and found out two years later that she had been sterilized.

"I was a victim of that after I had one daughter. I wish I had more children," Jean said in San Francisco at the AIM West Conference in 2013. Her story was later made into the documentary film, 'Ama.'

"There are a lot of Native American women out there who never had children because of this," Jean said in San Francisco.


Read more:

Sterilization of Native Women

In the 1970s, doctors in the United States sterilized an estimated 25 to 42 percent of Native American women of childbearing age, some as young as 15. -- Brianna Theobald, an assistant professor of history at the University of Rochester, in her book, Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press) https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/native-americans-government-authorities-and-the-reproductive-politics-403792/

"A study by the U.S. General Accounting Office finds that 4 of the 12 Indian Health Service regions sterilized 3,406 American Indian women without their permission between 1973 and 1976. The GAO finds that 36 women under age 21 were sterilized during this period despite a court-ordered moratorium on sterilizations of women younger than 21.

"Two years earlier, an independent study by Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, Choctaw/Cherokee, found that one in four American Indian women had been sterilized without her consent. PInkerton-Uri’s research indicated that the Indian Health Service had “singled out full-blooded Indian women for sterilization procedures.”

California was not alone in forced sterilizations.

"A review of sterilization procedures in the Aberdeen, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, and Phoenix areas showed that these areas were generally not in compliance with IHS regulations," the U.S. General Accounting Office said.
This document stating sterilizations by the Indian Health Service was not public initially. It was released with 'restricted' access in 1975.

Watch film: 'Native american Holocaust -- Exterminate Them! The California Story,' documentary details the holocaust committed against the native people of California by the state and federal governments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwgopN9lFpg

LA Progressive reports on the current reparations. CalVCB has an online portal for survivors of state-sponsored forced or unknown sterilization who can apply for compensation until December 31, 2023.

Video interview with Jean Whitehorse, Dine' by Censored News

The American Indian Genocide Museum was at the South by Southwest Expo in Austin, in the state of Texas, a region of mass genocide of Native people. By Steve Melendez, cofounder of AIGM.

Stanford Medicine: 1953 to 1969 Policy of Termination and Relocation

A Slow and Toxic Genocide: No Place for Whales: The U.S. military left behind strewn mustard gas pits, napalm burn pits, unexploded bombs, and secret radioactive dumps
across Indian country. New at Censored News

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