The enormity of government-funded sterilization has been compiled by a masters student in history, Sally Torpy, at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her thesis, Endangered Species: Native American Womens Struggle for Their Reproductive Rights and Racial Identity, 1970s-1990s, which was defended during the summer of 1998, places the sterilization campaign in the context of the eugenics movement. No one even today knows exactly how many Native American women were sterilized during the 1970s. One base for calculation is provided by the General Accounting Office, whose study covered only four of twelve IHS regions over four years (1973 through 1976). Within those limits, 3,406 Indian women were sterilized, according to the GAO. Another estimate was provided by Lehman Brightman, who is Lakota, and who devoted much of his life to the issue, suffering a libel suit by doctors in the process. His educated guess (without exact calculations to back it up) is that 40 per cent of Native women and 10 per cent of Native men were sterilized during the decade. Brightman estimates that the total number of Indian women sterilized during the decade was between 60,000 and 70,000.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 20:18:19 +0000