This translation has been automatically generated and has not been verified for accuracy.A Cree woman had just given birth to her sixth child in Saskatoon, when she was presented with a consent form for her sterilization.
The report, released Thursday, says coerced sterilization of Indigenous women is not a matter of the past and still happens in Canada today. It also argues that the practice hurts other marginalized and vulnerable groups in the country, including Black women and other people of colour. Until 1972, Alberta had a law requiring the forced or coerced sterilization of people considered “mentally defective.” In British Columbia, the same law existed until 1973.
About 1,150 Indigenous women were sterilized in these hospitals over a 10-year period up until the early 1970s, says the report.“There was ‘a climate of racism and paternalism leading to the view that sterilization was for some women’s own good,” Stote says in the report. “The prevalence of this horrific practice is both under-reported and underestimated,” she said in a news release.