This article was first published by ATPN News.
Survivors of forced sterilization came together in early March to heal collectively in Gatineau, Que.
It’s the first time on a national scale that a meeting like this has taken place.
Kahsenniyo Kick is Wolf Clan Mother from Six Nations west of Toronto.
She says she spent a lot of time processing her experience in isolation because she felt shame.
“I was 16 years old when the procedure happened during the delivery of my daughter,” she says, “and I knew the procedure was happening, but I didn’t have all of the proper information to be able to make an informed decision about my body and my long-term fertility. And so it took time to fully understand what was done to me.”
She says she hopes the national gathering will allow survivors to come together and understand they’re not alone.
The exact number of victims of forced and coerced sterilization in Canada isn’t known. But the National Women’s Association of Canada says it has been going on since the 1930s.
At a news conference ahead of the national gathering, Dr. Marlyn Cook of Misipawistik Cree Nation shared what she witnessed working as a nurse in northern Manitoba in the late 1970s.
“I often saw the physicians coming in and making the decision that somebody needed their tubes to be tied or sterilized,” says Cook, who also sits on the board of the Survivors Circle for Reproductive Justice. “And they would tell the nurses to get the consent form signed and they were supposed to do the explanation to the patient and get the consent form signed.
“Not all the doctors did that but there were some doctors who would routinely say just get them signed, and I would question whether or not the patient was fully aware what they were going into the surgery for.”
Cook says some patients also had birth control inserted without their knowledge.
“I had one patient who’s oldest, who’s baby was 19 years old, and she often wondered why she never got pregnant again and I was doing a pap test on her, she hadn’t had one done in years and she had an IUD (intrauterine device) in that she never knew was there,” says Cook.
Sen. Yvonne Boyer has a private members bill called S-250 that would criminalize the “severing, clipping, tying or cauterizing, in whole or in part, of the Fallopian tubes, ovaries or uterus of a person” whose consent was not given.
The penalty would be up to 14 years in prison.
The preamble to the bill says forced or coerced sterilization “disproportionally, but not exclusively, affects Indigenous and racialized persons.”
Boyer says the procedure is still happening to vulnerable women across the country.
“The numbers that we have counted up to this point are at least 12,000,” she says, “for instance, in Igloolik, 26 per cent of all the Inuit women were sterilized.”
Boyer’s bill made it through the Senate, but must also pass through the House of Commons. Legislation has been slowed because Parliament is currently prorogued and won’t be back in session until March 24 unless an election is called sooner. Opposition parties have threatened to bring down the government at that time meaning all legislation that hasn’t passed will have to be reintroduced and start over.
Currently there are a number of class-action lawsuits against hospitals across the country.
Malika Popp from Fishing Lake First Nation in Treaty 4 is part of the class action in Saskatchewan.
“The forced and coerced sterilization of Indigenous women is specific to genocide because it seemed to target on a marginalized group of Indigenous women who were vulnerable, exposed in their most vulnerable, exposed state, labor,” she says.
Popp says she’s using her experience to help other survivors to apply for healing funds provided by the survivors circle.
Kick says she’s looking forward to meeting women from across the country.
“We no longer have to be silent about the injustices that we faced with our sterilization, and events like the national gathering help to provide a platform to be able to say that what happened to us wasn’t OK,” she says.
By Savanna Craig of APTN News.
