An Act of Genocide: Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women

Karen Stote, An Act of Genocide: Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women. Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 2015. 200 pages. ISBN 978-1-55266-732-3. $25.00 paperback.In An Act of Genocide: Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women, Karen Stote situates the mid-to-late twentieth century coercive sterilization of Native women in a much longer history of colonialism. In just under two-hundred pages, Stote familiarizes readers not only with sterilization, birth control, and abusive abortions (the focus of chapter three) but also with early 20th-century eugenics, Canadian federal Indian policy, and a broader investigation of the history and application of the term genocide. From the book's acknowledgements through its conclusion, An Act of Genocide makes its position clear: is meant as a statement of solidarity with those who have consistently resisted an unjust system which treats all of us poorly and continues to deny Indigenous peoples the right to exist on their own terms... (vii). This text then is not only a study that relays a series of historical moments but one that advances strong arguments with clear political commitments. The author notes in the preface that many people respond to the topic of Indigenous women and coerced sterilization with incredulity. Thus the book seeks not only to demonstrate that this violation of reproductive justice occurred but also to shed light on how and why. Stote maintains that the consistent undermining of Aboriginal women and their reproductive lives through policies and practices like coercive sterilization has been part of a longstanding attack against Indigenous ways of life in an effort to reduce those to whom the federal government has obligations, and in order to gain access to lands and resources (1).The book's first chapter examines the role that Canadian suffragettes and maternal feminists played in upholding rather than dismantling the interconnected systems of capitalism and settler colonialism. Flere Stote notes that a handful of renowned Canadian feminists supported a eugenic framework (some, robustly so). The second chapter provides a brief history of Canadian federal Indian policy with particular attention to the 1876 Indian Act and the ways in which it affected women over the longue duree. The third chapter investigates coercive sterilization and also addresses how the state employed birth control and abortion in ways that denied Indigenous women full reproductive control. …

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