Chapter 4
Forced Sterilization
Forced Sterilization
In 2015, this organization showed Canadians how the colonial state disrupted and attempted to eradicate Indigenous peoples (Metis, Inuit, First Nations) cultures.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
A purification ceremony in which individuals enter a sacred lodge and sweat out the toxins/negative energy that create imbalance.
Sweat Lodge ceremony
The only berry strong enough to wear her seeds on the outside.
Strawberries
A medical professional trained to assist a woman in labor with childbirth.
Midwife
Other terms that doulas prefer to be called.
helper, birth helper/worker, auntie, good relative, sister.
A malicious determinant of health, one that continues to be practiced today.
forced and/or coerced sterilization
The birthplace of Jennifer Leason's mother Patricia.
Camperville, Manitoba
An act of radical resistance against the genocide.
Indigenous birth
An Indigenous term for North America.
Turtle Island
Pregnant First Nations women living on remote reserves sent to cities for childbirth in hospitals.
mandatory evacuation policy
The practice or promotion of controlled, select breeding of human populations. Based on the belief that an evolved society is one where its citizens have a specific set of biological, physical, and moral qualities.
Eugenics
As an Indigenous methodology, readers or listeners learn about Indigenous experiences and perspectives.
Storytelling
The author suggests that we perform this action to the lens from which we view our bodies.
Flip
A respected person by the communities they serve, recognized for their many experiences, knowledge they have accumulated, and willingness to share it with others.
Knowledge Keeper
Some of these institutions conducted medical experiments on patients including the 1933 experimental trial of a tuberculosis vaccine on First Nations infants.
Indian Hospitals
In Canada, self-identifying women who are First Nations, Inuit, or Metis.
Indigenous Women
A practice used to cleanse a person or place.
Smudge
According to Elder Marge Friedel, the development of our body represents this direction.
East
An ancient caregiving role that provides information as well as physical and emotional support to a mother before, during, and just after childbirth.
Doula
The dominant model of care in Western hospitals.
biomedical
The healthcare system ought to mirror the special relationship and roles that women share with these three elements.
the family, the land, and the Creator
The period immediately before and after birth.
Perinatal
In order for us to feel whole and balanced, each one of our quadrants requires these two things.
Love and Care.
A ceremony in which the umbilical cord is kept in a small bag and attached to a cradleboard until the infant is older, then it is placed on the land to make the child a good hunter.
belly button ceremony
A policy that takes an Indigenous baby from their mother immediately after birth.
Birth Alerts