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| Jean Whitehorse, Dine', spoke at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2019 and described the forced sterilization of Native American women by the Indian Health Service. Photo courtesy Yvonne Swan, Colville Nation, AIM West delegation. |
Indigenous Women Sterilized by Governments Thwarted on Slow Road for Justice
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, July 1, 2024
Indigenous women were sterilized by governments throughout the Americas, lawsuits and testimony reveal from the United States, Canada, Mexico and Peru. In the United States, Jean Whitehorse, Dine', described how the Indian Health Service in Gallup, New Mexico, carried this out in secrecy. In Peru, Indigenous women were brutalized in villages during massive sterilization campaigns. In Canada and Greenland, Inuit women were targeted with both forced sterilizations and contraceptive devices as young girls.
Indigenous women tell their stories.
Jean Whitehorse, Dine', described the United States campaign to destroy Dine' identity and their futures, which began with boarding schools and continued with urban relocation and secret sterilizations. Whitehorse survived all of these.
Whitehorse survived boarding school, where she was forbidden to speak her Dine' language. She was among those in the urban relocation program to San Francisco Bay Area.
After returning to the Navajo Nation, she was treated for an illness at Indian Health Service in Gallup. "Two years later I found out that I was sterilized," Whitehorse told the AIM West Conference in San Francisco in talks at the annual conference. Whitehorse testified at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York in 2019. Her story is now the documentary film, "Ama."
"The American Indian Movement (AIM) discovered the involuntary sterilization of American Indian women in records they removed after occupying the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in 1972," Morgan T. Peters writes in Forgotten Women: The Involuntary Sterilization of American Indian Women during the Twentieth Century.
It took years for the truth to be revealed.
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, Native Voice reports.
Naja Lyberth, a psychologist and therapist specializing in trauma, was among thousands of girls and women who received an IUD in Greenland. The girls often received forced insertions at or around the age of 14, and some as young as 12. Photos courtesy Naja Lyberth, Orato World
In Nuuk, Greenland, Naja Lyberth, said, "In 2017, I shattered my silence about the harrowing pain of having an IUD forcefully inserted into my body as a young teenager. I remember the day my school sent me to the hospital in Maniitsoq."
"The memory of a doctor in a stark white uniform haunted me for years. At the time, his intentions remained unclear, but when I look back at what he did to me, it still feels like knives cutting me from the inside. The excruciating experience was cloaked in shame, and it rendered me speechless," Lyberth recounts in Orato World.
Sabina Huillca, 46, sells bread on the streets of Lima.
Twenty years ago she was growing potatoes and corn and bringing up her children in her native Huayllacocha, a village in the Andes four hours by car from the provincial capital, Cuzco, Javier Lizarzaburu reported from Lima, Peru, for BBC.
"But she told me her life changed forever one day in 1996."
A doctor suggested Ms Huillca, who was heavily pregnant at the time, visit a health clinic in the town of Izcuchaca.
She told the BBC that the nightmare started straight after she gave birth.
"A nurse put me on a stretcher and tied my hands and feet," she recalled.
"I asked them to bring me my little baby girl but instead they anesthetized me," she said.
"When I woke up, the doctor was stitching my stomach. I started screaming, I knew I had been sterilized."
Huillca was a victim of a family planning programme as a result of which thousands of women were forcibly sterilized.
Testimonies of women who were sterilized against their will under the regime of former dictator Alberto Fujimori demonstrate that forced sterilization was widespread as a systematic policy and not a matter of isolated incidents, TeleSur reported.
Victims were tricked and lied to by medical professionals and targeted by the state campaign directed from the capital Lima.
“I told them several times no, I didn’t want it, that I was pregnant, but they insisted. ‘It’s the government’s order,’ they told me,” Felipa Guerra Martinez, a victim of forced sterilization in the 1990’s, told the Peruvian daily La Republica. “Then they told me they were just going to a pregnancy check-up. But it was a hoax.”
Martinez was sterilized against her will along with at least 100 other women.
Bertila Cachique Tuanama said she did not want to be sterilized despite the government’s orders. When she tried to run away, health professionals caught her and forced her to go to the hospital along with other women.
“They tied my wrists to the table to sterilize me against my will,” said Tuanama. “I couldn’t defend myself. They didn’t do any exams, tests, psychology, and I didn’t sign anything.”
Lady Davila Montenegro went to the hospital when doctors offered medical check-ups, but left with dozens of other women sterilized. She suffered serious infections after the unwanted operation, but never reported the violation due to lack of resources and fear of political persecution.
During the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2019, Jean Whitehorse, Dine', spoke of the forced sterilization of Native American women.
Sharing her own story, Jean exposed how the United States government carried out forced sterilization on Native women from 1960 to 1978.
Jean described how mothers are the life givers and hold a special place in society.
Jean exposed the United States' Eugenic policy of the elimination of targeted peoples with forced sterilization.
Jean stated that forced sterilization is a crime against humanity as stated by the International Criminal Court.
In the U.S., as many as 70,000 Native women were the victims of forced or coerced sterilization by the Indian Health Service and privately contracted physicians between 1960 and 1978, Jean told the full session.
During the presentation by AIM West at the United Nations in New York, Jean also showed the film Ama, which means 'mother' in Dine', at a U.N. side event.
In the film that exposes the forced sterilization, Jean shares her personal story.
In Jean's request to the United Nations, Jean requests an apology from the United States government to Native women. She requested that the United Nations carry out a global survey of forced sterilization and its impacts.
In its final report, the Permanent Forum stated in 2019:
Class-action suit filed for Indigenous women subjected to coerced sterilization
The lawsuit says that before 1973, the practice of sterilizing a person in the absence of their informed consent was expressly sanctioned in the province under the Sexual Sterilization Act.
Author of the article:Keith Fraser, Vancouver Sun
Published Feb 25, 2023 A proposed class-action lawsuit has been filed against the B.C. government on behalf of Indigenous women subjected to coerced sterilizations or abortions.
The lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court says that before 1973, the practice of sterilizing a person in the absence of their informed consent was expressly sanctioned in the province under the Sexual Sterilization Act.
Lawsuit continues
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| Jean Whitehorse video interview at AIM West by Censored News in 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26-QlIGhXcE |
Whitehorse was among thousands of women sterilized without their knowledge by Indian Health Service doctors.
AIM Discovered the Files during BIA Takeover in 1972
"The American Indian Movement (AIM) discovered the involuntary sterilization of American Indian women in records they removed after occupying the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in 1972," Morgan T. Peters writes in Forgotten Women: The Involuntary Sterilization of American Indian Women during the Twentieth Century.
However, it would take nearly two years for information on the sterilization of American Indian women to be made public in 1974 by the Akwesasne Notes, a newspaper published by the Mohawk Nation.
"Mainstream media, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, would take another two years to publish an article on the matter in 1976. Their articles appeared after the General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report investigating allegations against the IHS," Peters wrote.
It took years for the truth to be revealed.
During the six day occupation of the BIA takeover in Washington, the documents were uncovered that revealed a high percentage of American Indian women had been involuntarily sterilized.
"It would take two years for this information to be published, when Akwesasne Notes published Sterilization of Young Native Women Alleged at Indian Hospital -- 48 Operations in July, 1974 Alone in 1974."
The article focused on the high rates of sterilization at an IHS facility in Claremore, Oklahoma, Peters wrote.
The United States Continued Sterilizations after 1974
The General Accounting Office report shows that even after legislation designed to protect women from forced sterilization was passed in 1974, the abusive sterilizations continued. During six years time, 1970 through 1976, between 25 and 50 percent of Native women were sterilized.
In 1976, the U.S. General Accounting Office said Indian Health Service performed 3,406 sterilizations of Native women in three years, 1973 -- 1976, and continued to be out of compliance with laws prohibiting sterilization.
The victims were in the IHS regions of Aberdeen, South Dakota; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Phoenix, Arizona. https://www.gao.gov/assets/hrd-77-3.pdf
Full-blooded Native Women were Targeted
In some cases, Native American women went to IHS for other surgeries, and doctors performed hysterectomies without their consent. In other cases, women were told they would lose their benefits if they didn't consent. Girls as young as 11 were victims of sterilization in the U.S., and Native school girls were often targeted at the age of 15 for sterilization. Some never knew they were the victims of sterilization until years later when they were ready to have children.
The study by the U.S. General Accounting Office reported that 4 of the 12 Indian Health Service regions sterilized 3,406 American Indian women without their permission between 1973 and 1976. The GAO found 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, Native Voice reports.
U.N. Testimony: Inuit women targeted in Greenland
Indigenous women told the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York in April in 2024 that Inuit women were fitted with contraceptive devices without their consent or knowledge.
In March, Inuit women in Greenland sued Denmark for forcing them to be fitted with intrauterine contraceptive devices in the 1960s and 1970s.
Naja Lyberth, a psychologist and therapist specializing in trauma, was among thousands of girls and women who received an IUD in Greenland. The girls often received forced insertions at or around the age of 14, and some as young as 12. Photos courtesy Naja Lyberth, Orato World"The memory of a doctor in a stark white uniform haunted me for years. At the time, his intentions remained unclear, but when I look back at what he did to me, it still feels like knives cutting me from the inside. The excruciating experience was cloaked in shame, and it rendered me speechless," Lyberth recounts in Orato World.
Danish Health Authorities Violated Women's Rights
"The 143 Inuit women say Danish health authorities violated their human rights when they fitted them with the devices, commonly known as coils. Some of the women — including many who were teenagers at the time — were not aware of what happened or did not consent to the intervention," AP reported in March of 2024.
"The purpose was allegedly to limit population growth in Greenland by preventing pregnancies."
Canada's Genocide Documented
"Forced and coerced sterilization has a long history in Canada, including as a strategy to subjugate and eliminate First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples," Canada's Senate investigation revealed.
"The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls highlighted that official policies of sterilization emerged in the 1920s as part of the eugenics movement and formed part of a genocidal policy against Indigenous peoples."
"The purpose was allegedly to limit population growth in Greenland by preventing pregnancies."
Canada's Genocide Documented
"Forced and coerced sterilization has a long history in Canada, including as a strategy to subjugate and eliminate First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples," Canada's Senate investigation revealed.
"The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls highlighted that official policies of sterilization emerged in the 1920s as part of the eugenics movement and formed part of a genocidal policy against Indigenous peoples."
The eugenics policy is documented in The Scars That We Carry: Forced and Coerced Sterilization of Persons in Canada, by Canada's Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights.
“For Indigenous women in particular, forced and coerced sterilization is an act of sexism, racism and cultural genocide, rooted in colonization and paternalism," said Dr. Evan Adams, Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Public Health, Indigenous Services Canada.
There were more than 1,150 sterilizations of women from the North of Canada and women being treated in federally operated Indian hospitals.
“For Indigenous women in particular, forced and coerced sterilization is an act of sexism, racism and cultural genocide, rooted in colonization and paternalism," said Dr. Evan Adams, Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Public Health, Indigenous Services Canada.
There were more than 1,150 sterilizations of women from the North of Canada and women being treated in federally operated Indian hospitals.
Lawsuit in Quebec
A judge in Quebec has given the go-ahead for a class action lawsuit over the forced sterilization of Indigenous women in the Canadian province.
Two Atikamekw women known publicly by only their initials, UT and MX, brought the lawsuit against three doctors they accuse of performing or coercing women into sterilisation procedures in a small, remote town in northern Quebec, the Guardian reports.
Decades after many other rich countries stopped forcibly sterilizing Indigenous women, numerous activists, doctors, politicians and at least five class-action lawsuits say the practice has not ended in Canada.
"Thousands of Indigenous Canadian women over the past seven decades were coercively sterilized, in line with eugenics legislation that deemed them inferior," AP reports."The Geneva Conventions describe forced sterilization as a type of genocide and crime against humanity and the Canadian government has condemned reports of forced sterilization elsewhere, including among Uyghur women in China."
More than 280,000 women and men sterilized in Peru
More than 280,000 women and men sterilized in Peru
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| Sabina Huillca is one of the women who was forcibly sterilized in Peru. Photo Javier Lizarzaburu, BBC. |
Indigenous Women in Peru Sterilized
Twenty years ago she was growing potatoes and corn and bringing up her children in her native Huayllacocha, a village in the Andes four hours by car from the provincial capital, Cuzco, Javier Lizarzaburu reported from Lima, Peru, for BBC.
"But she told me her life changed forever one day in 1996."
A doctor suggested Ms Huillca, who was heavily pregnant at the time, visit a health clinic in the town of Izcuchaca.
She told the BBC that the nightmare started straight after she gave birth.
"A nurse put me on a stretcher and tied my hands and feet," she recalled.
"I asked them to bring me my little baby girl but instead they anesthetized me," she said.
"When I woke up, the doctor was stitching my stomach. I started screaming, I knew I had been sterilized."
Huillca was a victim of a family planning programme as a result of which thousands of women were forcibly sterilized.
Victims were tricked and lied to by medical professionals and targeted by the state campaign directed from the capital Lima.
“I told them several times no, I didn’t want it, that I was pregnant, but they insisted. ‘It’s the government’s order,’ they told me,” Felipa Guerra Martinez, a victim of forced sterilization in the 1990’s, told the Peruvian daily La Republica. “Then they told me they were just going to a pregnancy check-up. But it was a hoax.”
Martinez was sterilized against her will along with at least 100 other women.
Bertila Cachique Tuanama said she did not want to be sterilized despite the government’s orders. When she tried to run away, health professionals caught her and forced her to go to the hospital along with other women.
“They tied my wrists to the table to sterilize me against my will,” said Tuanama. “I couldn’t defend myself. They didn’t do any exams, tests, psychology, and I didn’t sign anything.”
Lady Davila Montenegro went to the hospital when doctors offered medical check-ups, but left with dozens of other women sterilized. She suffered serious infections after the unwanted operation, but never reported the violation due to lack of resources and fear of political persecution.
Now, the government of Peru is fighting the women seeking justice.
"On December 7, Peru’s Supreme Court annulled an investigation into alleged cases of state-sponsored forced sterilizations, causing further delays in a case that has already stretched over two decades. Notably, the investigation would’ve implicated former President Alberto Fujimori and three of his health ministers," the Women's Media Center reports.
"Between 1996 and 2000, Fujimori oversaw a family planning program under which more than 280,000 women and men were sterilized in Peru — mainly in poor, rural areas. But many patients have said that they were manipulated or coerced into undergoing the surgeries."
Mexico: Doctors Forced Sterilizations in Hospitals
"Between 1996 and 2000, Fujimori oversaw a family planning program under which more than 280,000 women and men were sterilized in Peru — mainly in poor, rural areas. But many patients have said that they were manipulated or coerced into undergoing the surgeries."
Mexico: Doctors Forced Sterilizations in Hospitals
In Mexico, Alma's story in Guerrero reveals how doctors forced Indigenous women to be sterilized.
Alma, an Indigenous woman from Guerrero, was harassed by six different doctors and nurses who sought to sterilize her during the two days she spent in the hospital after the birth of her child, Cultural Survival reports.
After she refused to sign a document that would bring her into surgery, the doctors at Hospital General de Tlapa de Comonfort in Guerrero threatened that she would not be permitted to leave the hospital until she agreed to the surgery.
United Nations Testimony on U.S. Sterilization of Native American Women
Sharing her own story, Jean exposed how the United States government carried out forced sterilization on Native women from 1960 to 1978.
Jean described how mothers are the life givers and hold a special place in society.
Jean exposed the United States' Eugenic policy of the elimination of targeted peoples with forced sterilization.
Jean stated that forced sterilization is a crime against humanity as stated by the International Criminal Court.
In the U.S., as many as 70,000 Native women were the victims of forced or coerced sterilization by the Indian Health Service and privately contracted physicians between 1960 and 1978, Jean told the full session.
During the presentation by AIM West at the United Nations in New York, Jean also showed the film Ama, which means 'mother' in Dine', at a U.N. side event.
In the film that exposes the forced sterilization, Jean shares her personal story.
In Jean's request to the United Nations, Jean requests an apology from the United States government to Native women. She requested that the United Nations carry out a global survey of forced sterilization and its impacts.
"The Permanent Forum is deeply disturbed by apparent widespread policies and practices in previous years of the forced sterilization of indigenous women. This violation of women’s rights is exacerbated by the likely intention to restrict or reduce the population of indigenous peoples."
The Permanent Forum recommended an initial study on the global scope of past forced sterilization programs of indigenous peoples and to determine whether such programs continue to exist, and report to the Forum at its nineteenth session on the progress made.
'The Indian Health Service and the Sterilization of Native American Women,' by Jane Lawrence
Five Years Later: U.N. Permanent Forum's Report to United Nations
Now, five years after Jean's testimony to the U.N. Permanent Forum, the Forum prioritized the campaign against Inuit women and teens in its final report to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
The U.N. Permanent Forum urged governments to continue working with its Rapporteur.
The new U.N. Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples selected this year is Ukraine attorney Suleiman Mamutov.
The recently released report to the United Nations in 2024 states:
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| (Above) Final report of U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 2024. |
For Indigenous women it is a slow road to justice.
American Indian Movement Testimony on Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Women: U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2019
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| Protest in San Francisco 1970s: About one-third of sterilizations took place in California. |
PBS reports, "A poster protesting the practice of forced sterilization of women of color was created for a rally in San Francisco, California, in the 1970s. In the early 20th century 32 U.S. states passed laws allowing for the forced sterilization of people considered “unfit” to have children. About 20,000 forced sterilizations—one-third of the national total—took place in California before the practice was ended in 1979. The California program disproportionately affected Hispanics, women in particular. Latinas were 59 percent more likely than non-Hispanic women to be sterilized against their will."
More:
'Involuntary Sterilization of Native American Women in the United States: A Legal Approach,' by Nebraska Law Review
'Forgotten Women: The Involuntary Sterilization of American Indian Women during the Twentieth Century,' by Morgan T. Peters
B.C. Canada Indigenous Women File over Sterilization
The lawsuit says that before 1973, the practice of sterilizing a person in the absence of their informed consent was expressly sanctioned in the province under the Sexual Sterilization Act.
Author of the article:Keith Fraser, Vancouver Sun
Published Feb 25, 2023 A proposed class-action lawsuit has been filed against the B.C. government on behalf of Indigenous women subjected to coerced sterilizations or abortions.
The lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court says that before 1973, the practice of sterilizing a person in the absence of their informed consent was expressly sanctioned in the province under the Sexual Sterilization Act.
Alberta, Canada Women File Suit over Forced Sterilizations
TORONTO, Dec. 18, 2018 /CNW/ - Koskie Minsky LLP in Toronto, along with Cooper Regel in Edmonton, has commenced a class action against the Government of Alberta on behalf of Indigenous women subjected to forced sterilizations in the province.
Until 1972, Alberta's Sexual Sterilization Act explicitly authorized forced sterilizations in the province. After the Sexual Sterilization Act was repealed, doctors and nurses in Alberta continued to perform coerced sterilizations on Indigenous women. These actions were the product of systemic and institutional racism against Indigenous Peoples.
Until 1972, Alberta's Sexual Sterilization Act explicitly authorized forced sterilizations in the province. After the Sexual Sterilization Act was repealed, doctors and nurses in Alberta continued to perform coerced sterilizations on Indigenous women. These actions were the product of systemic and institutional racism against Indigenous Peoples.
APTN update Feb. 2023
An Indigenous Woman’s Legal Fight After Forced Sterilization
The involuntary sterilization of Norma Jean Serena, an Indigenous woman of Shawnee and Creek descent, living in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania
Serena filed a civil lawsuit in 1974 seeking damages for violations of her constitutional rights to procreate and bear children, as well as to the custody, companionship, services, and affection of her three minor children.
Article copyright Censored News
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