Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century

Abstract

In Reproduction on the Reservation, Brianna Theobald orients the history of reproductive justice around Native American women and the history of Native sovereignty around reproduction. In her analysis of the twentieth-century policies that shaped Native women's reproductive health, Theobald emphasizes Native women's stories. This is a conscious—and political—choice, reflecting Theobald's rejection of common narratives where sterilization abuse appears as the defining feature in the history of Native women's lives. Instead, Theobald illustrates a longer and more nuanced history of reproduction, pregnancy, and birthing practices throughout the twentieth century. This history is inextricably intertwined with the history of Native kinship, women's power within their communities, and cultural knowledge.Theobald balances her study between “depth” and “breadth,” alternating chapters between specific analyses of her case study of the Crow Reservation in southern Montana and a wider, national story of policy and activism. Her sources include oral histories of Crow and Northern Cheyenne women, bureaucratic records, government studies, ethnographic reports, memoirs, and the records of activist organizations. An expert at reading colonial sources against the grain, she finds Native women's resistance and negotiation in the words of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agents.Theobald identifies links between two distinct time periods: the early twentieth century and the 1960s to 1970s. Both periods were characterized by the “eliminatory logic” of the state and by Native women's activism. As Theobald notes, Native women navigated both periods with “fortitude and creativity,” negotiating, adapting, and refusing the federal government's prescriptions on childbirth and reproductive health (p. 12).Theobald's first chapter primarily focuses on Crow birthing and child-rearing practices, as she explains the system of “flexible childrearing,” where children, who had many parents and grandparents, were raised communally. In her second chapter, Theobald argues that the Progressive-era “Save the Babies” campaign was a “cornerstone of early twentieth-century federal Indian policy,” (pp. 44–45) illuminating the connection between the maternalist mission of field matrons, reformers, and other state agents and the medicalization of childbirth on reservations. In her analysis of the relationships between Native women and BIA personnel in the first decades of the twentieth century, she argues that BIA efforts to “persuade” Native women to conform to Americanized childbirth practices reveal how effectively Native women negotiated with BIA staff in matters of reproductive health.Reproduction on the Reservation has implications for our understanding of how Native people experienced the eugenics campaigns of the early twentieth century. In short, Theobald effectively demonstrates that the widespread coercive sterilization of Native women in the 1960s and 1970s was not an anomaly. In her third chapter, Theobald explores the conflict and interpersonal dynamics among BIA leadership on the Crow Reservation in the 1930s (including the superintendent, Robert Yellowtail, the first Native superintendent of his own reservation), non-Native and Native staff at the agency hospital, tribal council members, and Native women. In the 1930s, Crow women were “far from silent regarding health and politics,” and pushed reproductive health concerns into reservation politics (p. 85).Theobald's treatment of Native women's experiences of relocation in chapter 4 illuminates the dynamics of bureaucracy where assimilative policies and reproduction meet, including how Native women navigated health insurance and urban public hospitals. On relocation, Native women maintained and adapted their ties with reservations, practiced flexible childrearing in new environments, and, through Indian centers, established the infrastructure that the BIA sorely lacked. Theobald's definition of termination as a “host of policies and practices—not limited to the dissolution of a tribe's political status—that affected virtually every aspect of reservation life,” pushes scholarly discussions of termination outside of the political realm and into the everyday experiences of women and their families (p. 124). Specifically, in chapter 5, Theobald considers the role of terminationist policymakers’ decisions to close reservation hospitals—ostensibly as a way of saving money, but really as a way to ensure assimilation—in her analysis of Crow political opposition to termination.Theobald's focus on the activism among Native nurses, including Susie Yellowtail (Crow) provides needed context to the scholarly conversations around sterilization-related activism in the 1970s (p. 157). Her final chapter elucidates the contributions of Native women's organizations like Women of All Red Nations (WARN), the pan-Native women's organization founded in 1978, in the fight for decolonization, which required, “restoration of women's strength and the reclamation of their reproductive control” (p. 165).The definition of Native women's political activism should include reproductive health. For example, Native women have employed midwifery as a response to sterilization abuse and have advocated for access to health care using the language of treaty rights. Reproduction on the Reservation is a rich contribution to the historical fields of twentieth-century Native American activism, women's history, the history of reproductive justice, and Indian policy. Theobald reminds readers that reproductive health was and is a matter of tribal sovereignty.