Film examines forced sterilization of Native women

Screening set for Tuesday at Santa Fe Indian Center

The forced sterilization of Native American women in the 1960s and ’70s resulted in what many call a form of genocide.

Yet, the atrocity largely slipped through the cracks of U.S. history.

“This current generation does not know about [forced sterilization],” said Charon Asetoyer, a Comanche activist who has pushed for reproductive justice for indigenous people for more than 30 years as founder of the Native American Community Board and the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center.

“It’s not something talked about in our schools, even in Indian schools, and it’s not in history books,” Asetoyer added.

This is why the film Amá is so important, she said.

Amá, a full-length documentary that will be screened Tuesday night at the

Santa Fe Indian Center, is a rare, indepth examination of forced sterilization of Native women.

“We want people to see and understand this part of our history so we can do everything we can to prevent it from happening again,” said Asetoyer, who is featured in the film.

Amá, which means “mother” in several languages, primarily follows the life of Jean Whitehorse — a Navajo

woman who says she unwittingly underwent tubal ligation at an Indian Health Services hospital in Gallup during surgery for acute appendicitis in the 1970s.

A few years after the surgery, Whitehorse visited doctors to find out why she was having a difficult time becoming pregnant, only to learn of the sterilization.

The act, as part of a U.S. eugenics policy, was a “crime against humanity” and a “biological and cultural genocide,” Whitehorse says in a video in which she addresses the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

A forced sterilization program in the U.S. began in 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson’s administration created the Economic Opportunity Act, a familyplanning program aimed at the poor.

At the time, low-income minority women often were persuaded to sign medical forms, not knowing the documents gave consent to sterilize.

Indian Health Services doctors participated in the program, performing tubal ligation on Native woman during routine checkups, Asetoyer said.

Those who gave birth would undergo unnecessary cesarean sections so doctors could secretly perform hysterectomies.

A 1976 report from what was then called the U.S. General Accounting Office — now known as the Government Accountability Office — reviewed practices at four of the 12 Indian Health Service hospitals and found more than 3,400 Native women had been sterilized from 1973 to 1976.

Because the study only examined a third of the hospital locations within a three-year time frame, some estimate more than 70,000 women were affected.

Asetoyer said she believes Indian Health Services continues to control Native births through what she called “contraception abuse,” or administering long-term contraceptive devices or injections without informing women of the possible side effects, such as weight gain, hair loss and breast pain.

Women often come to her office complaining of such side effects, she said. “They feel really violated.”

The biggest effect is fewer births.

A 2018 study from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows Native women had the lowest birth rate of any ethnic group in 2016, the latest data available.

Amá aims to bring to light “all the different types of genocide perpetrated on us,” said Karen Buller, vice chairwoman of the Santa Fe Indian Center. “It’s important to have this unmasked, to have the curtain pulled back.”

The documentary, made by filmmaker Lorna Tucker and co-produced by Raindog Films — a London-based production company that includes Academy Award winning British actor Colin Firth — and the Roddick Foundation, made its debut in London in December.

It premiered in the U.S. at the

Santa Barbara Film Festival in February.

It has since been shown at numerous reservations across South Dakota and Oklahoma, as well as venues in New York and in Gallup in July.

Following the Santa Fe screening, organizers plan to take the film to the National Congress of Native Americans in Albuquerque at the end of the month.

Amá ends with a call to action, asking viewers to back a campaign for the U.S. government to give a formal apology to Native communities affected by coerced sterilization.

So far, more than 3,500 people have signed a petition on Amá’s website in support of the apology.

But a federal apology won’t make up for the injustice, Buller said.

“How can you give back the children that women wanted to have?” she said. “It’s lowered our population as well, and you can’t give that back.”