Indigenous women in Canada forcibly sterilised decades after other rich countries stopped

(AP) — Decades after many other rich countries stopped forcibly sterilising 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 penalised for forcibly sterilising 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 sterilised 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.

“Whenever I speak to an Indigenous community, I am swamped with women telling me that forced sterilisation happened to them,” Boyer, who has Indigenous Metis heritage, told The Associated Press.

Medical authorities in Canada’s Northwest Territories issued a series of punishments in May in what may be the first time a doctor has been sanctioned for forcibly sterilising an Indigenous woman, according to documents obtained by the AP.

The case involves Dr. Andrew Kotaska, who performed an operation to relieve an Indigenous woman’s abdominal pain in November 2019. He had her written consent to remove her right fallopian tube, but the patient, an Inuit woman, had not agreed to the removal of her left tube; losing both would leave her sterile.

Despite objections from other medical staff during the surgery, Kotaska took out both fallopian tubes.

The investigation concluded there was no medical justification for the sterilisation, and Kotaska was found to have engaged in unprofessional conduct. Kotaska’s “severe error in surgical judgment” was unethical, cost the patient the chance to have more children and could undermine trust in the medical system, investigators said.

The case was likely not exceptional.

Thousands of Indigenous Canadian women over the past seven decades were coercively sterilised, 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 sterilisation as a type of genocide and crime against humanity and the Canadian government has condemned reports of forced sterilisation elsewhere, including among Uyghur women in China.

In 2018, the U.N. Committee Against Torture told Canada it was concerned about persistent reports of forced sterilisation, saying all allegations should be investigated and those found responsible held accountable.

In 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged that the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women across Canada amounted to “genocide,” but activists say little has been done to address ingrained prejudices against the Indigenous, allowing forced sterilisations to continue.

In a statement, the Canadian government told the AP it was aware of allegations that Indigenous women were forcibly sterilised and the matter is before the courts.

“Sterilisation of women without their informed consent constitutes an assault and is a criminal offense,” the government said.

“We recognise the pressing need to end this practice across Canada,” it said, adding that it is working with provincial and territorial authorities, health agencies and Indigenous groups to eliminate systemic racism in the country’s health systems.

Boyer, the senator collecting data on the issue, recalled once being approached by a tearful Indigenous woman describing her forced sterilisation.

“It made my knees buckle to hear her story and to realise how common it was,” Boyer said. “Nothing has changed legally or culturally in Canada to stop this.”

BY MARIA CHENG