In the early 1960s – 1970s across Canada, over 1000 Indigenous Women were sterilized in a procedure that took away their ability to have children. Even though laws said that the women had to give consent before being sterilized, many of those surgeries were performed after extreme persuasion, coercion, or in some cases no consent at all. In total, several thousands of people were sterilized from 1928 to 2015, the majority of them Indigenous. “It is more cost-effective to limit the ability of Indigenous women to reproduce that it is to do what is required to improve the conditions into which children are born. When understood within this context, the coerced sterilization of Indigenous women can be viewed as an act of genocide, or an attempt to undermine the ability of a group to exist.” (Stote)
The practice of coerced sterilization begins with the contemptible but very popular pseudo-science called eugenics. The eugenics movement started in the UK in 1883 from Francis Galton’s idea of selective breeding to promote positive characteristics in the population, drawing on an incorrect understanding of the works of Darwin and Mendel. The language of eugenics is insulting and demeaning – it is the language of the period. (These offensive terms are in italics, unless they are directly quoted from an original source, such as the laws that were enacted in BC and Alberta, or from the Vancouver Sun editorial of 1927)
People mistakenly believed that heredity could be promoted to benefit the race. If this was true, then the opposite was also true: people who were feeble-minded could pass this defect on to their children. (James H. Marsh) Protestant Anglo-Saxons were very afraid that they would be outbred by degenerates. This fear emerged from the white race’s privilege and entitlement and their wish to maintain their position of dominance. Another fear was that unfit people produced unfit people who become a financial burden on government institutions.
A Vancouver Sun newspaper editorial, in Nov., 1927, explained: “It is an admitted fact in every civilized country of the world today that the unfit are multiplying at the rate something like double [the rate] of the fit. Thus, for every child born with the mental, physical and moral ability to maintain and promote civilization, two are born with the instincts to flout the essential discipline of civilization and tear civilization down.”
- To address their concerns, Alberta passed the Sexual Sterilization Act in 1928, which lasted to 1972. According to the law, a person diagnosed as “mental defective” could be declared to be a candidate for sterilization by the Eugenics Board.
- In Alberta, one study concluded “Aboriginals were the most prominent victims of the {Eugenics} Board’s attention. They were overrepresented among presented cases and among those diagnosed as mentally defective.”
- In British Columbia, the sterilization laws were in effect from 1933 to 1973. The Eugenics Board of BC could order any inmate of a provincial institution sterilized who, upon discharge, was declared to be likely to “begat or bear children who by reason of inheritance” could tend to “serious mental disease of deficiency,” as it was defined in the Sterilization Act.
Whereas the number of sterilizations was more restrictive in BC, the laws in both Alberta and BC were broadly interpreted. From the late 1920’s onwards, coerced sterilizations began on: Indigenous women, Indigenous men, Metis, Inuit, youth, immigrants (particularly from Central and Eastern Europe, including Roma gypsies), also, Asians, Blacks, disabled people, alcoholics, people in institutions- criminals and the mentally ill, racial and ethnic minorities, the urban poor, prostitutes, women with 4 – 6 children still in child-bearing age, women who didn’t fit the mold of femininity at that time, and finally homosexuals, two-spirit Indigenous people, and trans people. (This list was collected from numerous sources and is probably incomplete.)
The Supervisor of Social Services at Essondale (renamed Riverview), an institution for the mentally ill in the lower mainland of BC, proposed the sterilization of an Indigenous girl in this way: “Patient is a mentally defective Indian girl who has always been incorrigible, wild, undisciplined and promiscuous. . . Sterilization is, therefore, strongly recommended to prevent patient from having illegitimate children, which the community would have to care for and for whom it would be very difficult to find foster homes.”(Stote)
In Alberta, Leilani Muir, an abused child, was admitted to the Provincial School for Defectives in 1955 at age of ten, by her abusive mother. Leilani performed well in the Provincial School, but was given an IQ test. The test was most probably based on Western Anglo-culture and linguistic assessments that would disadvantage Indigenous peoples. After the test, Leilani was declared to be a “mental defective moron” and sterilization was ordered. She was scheduled for a “routine appendectomy” and during this procedure had her fallopian tubes cut, rendering her forever unable to bear children. She had not given her consent and was not told of this until she discovered it later in life, during her marriage, when she wished to have children. The surgery did not conform to regulations, and Leilani wrote, “The Board . . .took the law into their own hands.” (Kowalchuk) Further IQ tests showed her to be of normal intelligence. In 1996, Muir sued the Alberta government for wrongful sterilization, won, and was awarded $740,000 in damages. This case resulted in more than 1,200 victims seeking compensation from the government.
Indigenous Women and Lawful Sterilization
- In Alberta, from 1928 to 1972, 4,739 cases were recommended and 2,834 were performed. Although Indigenous women were only about 2 -3 percent of the population, more than double that percentage were sterilized.
- During the final years of the Sexual Sterilization Act, from 1969 to 1972, Indigenous Women represented about 25 per cent of those sterilized.
- In BC, records of sterilizations have been lost or destroyed, but estimates are between 200 and 400 people, some of whom were Indigenous.
- In total, the evidence showed that “74% of all Aboriginals presented to the [Eugenics] Board[s] were eventually sterilized (compared to 60% of all patients presented.)” (Stote).
Indigenous Women and Unlawful Sterilization
- So popular was the eugenic theory that in Ontario doctors, without legal support, took it upon themselves to sterilize people in the belief that this would prevent poverty. About 400 women and 1000 men were sterilized with no supporting legislation, from about the 1930s to 2015 (Stote)
- In the zones called Baffin, Mackenzie, Inuvik, and Keewatin, a total of 344 sterilizations were performed between 1970-75. From 1970-75, 122 vasectomies were performed on Aboriginal Men in the Northern Region.
- In federally-run “Indian hospitals” throughout Canada, serving mainly Indigenous peoples, from 1971 – 1974, at least 551 sterilizations were performed on Indigenous women. The prevailing view was that the sterilizations were for their own good.
- Numbers were difficult for the researchers to obtain, because records were either not kept, lost or destroyed and it is likely the number of sterilizations was underrepresented.
Consent and Coercion
Consent was required to perform sterilizations. In 1970, M.P. David Lewis alleged that representatives from the Department of Health were persuading Indigenous women to be sterilized. He claimed that interpreters were not always used and that therefore, women did not always understand the procedures they received. Finally, in 1976, a federal government internal inquiry showed that “health workers sometimes failed to follow guidelines on when sterilizations could be performed, that consent forms were difficult to understand and that interpreters were not always used.” In a class action lawsuit, Indigenous women reported they were pressured to consent when under duress, and/or were told they would not be able to see their newborn child unless they agreed to sterilization. And sometimes the sterilization was performed without consent at all. (Leilani Muir and many others)
- In Ontario a 1976 study reported that 686 sterilizations were carried out in one year, on persons who were unable to give consent, for example, developmentally delayed people and youth. [This number is included in statistics already reported).
- 308 of these were on children, 50 boys, and 258 girls. And 109 of the operations were radical hysterectomies. (Stote)
Repeal of Sexual Sterilization Acts
- In 1973, the BC Sexual Sterilization Act was repealed by the NDP government of Dave Barrett
- In 1972, the Alberta Act was repealed by the Progressive Conservative government of Peter Lougheed
- But there is evidence to suggest that coerced sterilization continued into the 21st Century: In Saskatoon, where there was no legislation to support sterilization, about 100 Indigenous Women alleged that they had been coerced to accept it during the period, 1970 – 2018.
The statistics reveal that Indigenous women were targeted. The practice of eugenics was influenced by colonial policies of assimilation along with the prevailing racism and sexism of the times. Coerced sterilization was a grave injustice, an injustice that was never fully redressed, either in reparations for all survivors, or in penalties for the perpetrators.
Sources:
An Act of Genocide, Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women, by Dr. Karen Stote, Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario. And, an article online entitled, Sterilization of Indigenous Women in Canada.
Alberta Heritage, online encyclopedia
Analyzing Assessment Practices for Indigenous Students, by Jane P. Preston, Tim R. Claypool.
Eugenics: Pseudo-Science Based on Crude Misconceptions of Heredity, by James H. March, published online, last edited March 4, 2015
Leilani Muir and Eugenics in Alberta, by Kristine Kowalchuk, March 14, 2023
National Human Genome Research Institute, see Eugenics: Its Origin and Development (1883 – Present).
The Vancouver Sun Editorial from November, 1927.
