Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century. Critical Indigeneities. By Brianna Theobald

Abstract

For years, stories of how Native women had been sterilized, either without their consent or through coercive measures, circulated in Indian country. These stories became public when the American Indian Movement’s take-over of the BIA building in Washington, D.C. led to a seizure of documents that proved federal policies prescribing draconian reproductive health measures for Native women and their families. Taking that moment when Native women’s stories meet proof of settler nation violence against Native women, Brianna Theobald’s Reproduction on the Reservation offers the first comprehensive history of Native women’s reproductive experiences that traces Native women’s loss of control over their bodies under uneven federal government surveillance and policing to present efforts toward reproductive justice. While the 1978 first conference of the Women of All Red Nations (WARN) responded to the charges of sterilization and coerced measures to control women’s bodies,Theobald demonstrates that Native women’s reproductive matters are not defined...