Indigenous women kept from seeing their newborns until agreeing to sterilization | Hacker News Reader

Indigenous women kept from seeing their newborns until agreeing to sterilization

cbc.ca

The article doesn't say anything about _why_ and _who_ made the order to sterilize the indigenous.

It looks tempting to believe that there's a motivation to make this particular indigenous race vanish.

Who wants that? And why?

Historically it was Canadian policy. You'd probably have to look to the 1930s (start of forced sterilization) or the 1880s (start of policy of suppression of indigenous peoples) to find out where, when, why and how. And as to why it's never stopped? How long have Indigenous people in Canada been protected by human rights? And how long between setting that policy and people getting used to the idea? (2008-2013 through various steps, and probably 2-3 generations at least, if people stop teaching the racism as "correct")

I live in Saskatoon, in a predominantly First Nations area. People here are not treated well by just about anyone.

I've always thought of Canada as a very tolerant country. That hostility is surprising to me.

When you say that people in Saskatoon are not treated well by just about anyone, how do you experience that over there?

Tubal ligations:

> At least 60 Indigenous women are pursuing a class-action lawsuit launched last year, alleging they underwent forced sterilizations over the past 20 to 25 years in Saskatchewan.

As someone who's never even been to Canada, this article makes little sense to me. Who are these Indigenous people, and why would anyone want to do this to them? Skimming some of the other comments, it seems I'm not alone in this sentiment.

That's what racism looks like from the outside. To people who've lived their entire lives unaware of the conflicts and prejudices between races, the practices employed to oppress a people seem unrealistically sinister, as if they're from some dark, dystopian novel. If this had been about US physicians coercing African American women into undergoing sterilization, I would've just shrugged it off as yet another act of racism, the sort to which I've grown accustomed to seeing everyday. The same beast is rearing its head in this case, yet only when it happens elsewhere does it look utterly foreign to me--"that would never happen in _my_ country!"

It's rare that I actually get an opportunity to observe racism from this perspective. Over the course of a lifetime, I've learned who hates whom and how they go about expressing that hatred on a regular basis. But I was entirely unaware of the conflict between these two peoples, despite living quite close to the Canadian border. It's a reminder that the racism I witness on a daily basis shouldn't be a part of my life, and it is utterly ridiculous to attempt to excuse it on the basis of ignorance. I'm the ignorant one here: I wasn't aware of this issue. The people involved in these acts of racism aren't ignorant; they're consciously choosing to engage in malicious acts against an arbitrarily defined portion of their own society. And their crimes should be treated as exactly that: pure, unprovoked malice.

Whenever a topic like this comes up I find it meaningful to mention the number of people who lived in North America in the year 1500. The population is thought to have been roughly one hundred million. Now the indigenous peoples are nonexistent in most places. Our government policies should cherish these populations.

Just FYI, this figure that gets used comes from the high end of a range that is estimated from 20 million to 100 million for a population of North America around 1500. The estimate for Europe is around 50 million to 60 million. https://www.quora.com/Is-the-claim-that-100-000-000-native-A...

Entire major temple complexes overrun by South American jungle have only been found because of modern deep scanning radar, so I feel it's pretty likely that the number is on the higher end compared to estimates from even 20 years ago.

Who supported this practice and why? Can anyone provide context?

No context, but prejudice against indigenous people is not novel.

USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterilization_of_Native_Americ...

> restricted to only four of the many IHS facilities nationwide and examined only the years 1973 to 1976. The GAO study showed that 3,406 involuntary sterilizations were performed in these four IHS hospitals during this three-year period.

Since the parent article is about forced sterilization in Canada, here's the relevant Wikipedia article about the history of Canadian eugenics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization_in_Ca...

Native Americans are 7x more likely to be fatally killed by police as well.

Source: https://priceonomics.com/the-places-with-the-most-and-least-...

"now I will kill you until you die from it!"

Seriously though this is hideous.

Most countries supported this practice until very recently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization

Based on a then standard idea of Eugenics.

Yeah, I'm with you. I'm really confused. Even the linked story from the first sentence, which I hoped would shed some light on why this is even happening, or what the legal status is or the history, has nothing.

You'd think if you were against this as a policy, you'd explain some of this history, which can't be good. But I guess these are tricky political issues to even talk about (which is part of the problem, IMHO).

Doing a little more research I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization_in_Ca...

Although it seems like all the laws have been repealed in the 70s?

This is horrific and I hope the international spotlight is put on Canada for this, from Trudeau all the way down. Indigenous rights are routinely trampled upon all over the world, and the developed nations have an obligation to set an example.

Canada is so weird to me - you have Trudeau, who is fairly left wing, you have the controversial C-16/speech stuff (I don't know enough to comment here, but progressives seem to like it), and then you have the Tar Sands, which are so environmentally horrible it's remarkable. You have Trudeau pushing for NAFTA to have language protecting native peoples - which is very progressive - and then you have fucking forced sterilization? It's mind boggling.

It wouldn't be so weird to me if they didn't act holier-than-thou about the US, but at least Americans readily admit we're weird and fucked up.

Progressives have loved eugenics for at least 100 years.

Our racism is a deeply hidden, systemic kind. It is in closely held personal beliefs, but often not put on public display. It is certainly worse in rural areas. It stems from judgement and ignorance.

It varies from province to province. In some places, de facto segregation still exists.

Understand, consecutive generations were taken from their parents to so-called residential schools. These were highly abusive environments, similar to China's re-education camps for Uyghurs. The last residential school closed in the late 1990's.

Children learn how to be parents, from their parents. For better or for worse. Take them away, traumatize them, then repeat for multiple generations and see what happens. It is not good.

I'm 31. When I was in school, we didn't learn about these atrocities. Really old stuff was talked about, like 17th century stuff, but the extent of the much more modern abuses was not part of the curriculum.

So the ignorance of their plight, combined with judgement of their behavior leads to the place where a doctor thinks he is doing society a favour by sterilizing this human being against her will.

Unfortunately, I think we are going to have our own angry-white-people feel-like-something-is-being-taken-away-from-them-and-need-someone-to-blame movement before things can get better.

Canadian politics runs 1 politician behind:

Harper was our Bush

Trudeau is our Obama

Kevin Oleary will be our Trump :sob:

> but at least Americans readily admit we're weird and fucked up.

Not exactly. As we saw in the duopoly article posted here yesterday, yes, there are a number on both sides that will say "the system is broken" but that is very different than acknowledging American exceptionalism. The left in the US is very aware of the structural issues, the right continues holding firm to their nationalist beliefs that do not make the admission you suggest.

I concur that it would be better if more Americans could acknowledge how odd we are in relation to the rest of the world. This goes from our abstinence from the metric system all the way to continued push-back against single-payer health insurance.

The key "says lawyer" portion of the headline is missing in the title.

This might be putting the cart before the horse but is it easier to implement these kinds of policies when they are mandated by a central authority? I'm thinking about nationalized healthcare here. This is the type of banal evil that the free market can stand against. The moment the word gets out about the practice that isn't forcing sterilization, I'd imagine they'd go there if the option was available.

Just to highlight the details of this situation, I wonder if other groups received the same treatment or not?

The practice is, either way, heinous. It would clarify some details to know if this was racially motivated against indigenous, all minorities, or just common (mal)practice against all mothers?

>As a senator calls for a nationwide review of the forced sterilization of Indigenous women

A review?! WHAT. I hope I am missing something here. But what-the-actual-fuck is this nonsense?

There is nothing to review. Don't do that. Stop it. Just... Stop.

The word "review" is a bit misleading here. She's calling for an investigation.

Can a senator do that? At least in the US, a single senator can't. If it is something in law, a senator will call for review, determine if other laws have been broken, draft a new law, get the law passed, etc. But the review process is often enough to get things moving. The governor might be able to take a direct action depending on the state, as could the president.

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