TORONTO (AP) — 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.
A Senate report last year concluded “this horrific practice is not confined to the past, but clearly is continuing today.” In May, a doctor was penalized for forcibly sterilizing an Indigenous woman in 2019.
Indigenous leaders say the country has yet to fully reckon with its troubled colonial past — or put a stop to a decades-long practice that is considered a type of genocide.
There are no solid estimates on how many women are still being sterilized against their will or without their knowledge, but Indigenous experts say they regularly hear complaints about it. Sen. Yvonne Boyer, whose office is collecting the limited data available, says at least 12,000 women have been affected since the 1970s.
Thousands of Indigenous Canadian women over the past seven decades were coercively sterilized, in line with eugenics legislation that deemed them inferior. In the U.S., forced sterilizations of Native American women mostly ended in the 1970s after new regulations were adopted requiring informed consent.
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.
Indigenous people comprise about 5% of Canada’s nearly 40 million people, with the biggest populations residing in the north: Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
The more than 600 Indigenous communities, known as First Nations, face significant health challenges compared to other Canadians. Suicide rates among Indigenous youth are six times higher than their counterparts and the life expectancy of First Nations people is about 14 years less than other Canadians.