Historical Perspective

The Provincial Sexual sterilization act was a set belief aimed at improving human population through controlled breeding. The act targeted indigenous women in specifically Alberta and British Columbia. This act could be seen from a historical perspective because governments thought this law would help wipe out Canada’s first nations and others didn’t know about it. “They have sterilized our women by trickery, by fraud and by crooks. They have asked them to sign a consent form they couldn’t read”. Indigenous women were mistreated and stripped of their identity and rights. Many women did not even know they were sterilized as they were told it was “reversible”. Each indigenous woman had their own perspective and trauma that affected the rest of their life. “I didn’t have a childhood because of hemorrhaging and passing out. This is how badly they damaged my insides”. This is a quote of a indigenous woman who was sterilized at 13 years old.  The doctors butchered her cutting, tying and cauterizing her fallopian tubes causing her to lose blood and fall ill causing her to pass out often. They damaged her insides and she wasn’t even aware she was sterilized until she was 19 years old when she had intentions of starting her own family. In Alberta it is known that 200 to 400 women were sterilized but documents were destroyed. By the time they realized they should put a stop to the sterilization act 74% of aboriginals were already sterilized and in 2017 the government finally apologized.