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

Critical Indigeneities

by Brianna Theobald

This pathbreaking book documents the transformation of reproductive practices and politics on Indian reservations from the late nineteenth century to the present, integrating a localized history of childbearing, motherhood, and activism on the Crow Reservation in Montana with an analysis of trends affecting Indigenous women more broadly. As Brianna Theobald illustrates, the federal government and local authorities have long sought to control Indigenous families and women's reproduction, using tactics such as coercive sterilization and removal of Indigenous children into the white foster care system. But Theobald examines women's resistance, showing how they have worked within families, tribal networks, and activist groups to confront these issues. Blending local and intimate family histories with the histories of broader movements such as WARN (Women of All Red Nations), Theobald links the federal government's intrusion into Indigenous women's reproductive and familial decisions to the wider history of eugenics and the reproductive rights movement. She argues convincingly that colonial politics have always been--and remain--reproductive politics.

By looking deeply at one tribal nation over more than a century, Theobald offers an especially rich analysis of how Indigenous women experienced pregnancy and motherhood under evolving federal Indian policy. At the heart of this history are the Crow women who displayed creativity and fortitude in struggling for reproductive self-determination.

Genres: Nonfiction, Indigenous, History, Feminism, Race, Social Justice, Gender Studies

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 21, 2019

Reviews

[Kayleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredibly educational, well researched, and heartbreaking. an important read for any woman passionate about reproductive history and indigenous rights.

[Cole Forbes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched and very informative. I hate colonialism :’)

I really enjoyed this but also I am about to begin a PhD program in maternal and child health epidemiology.. so like maybe I’m biased but this easily one of the best non fictions I’ve ever read!

If you want an overview and some fast facts, see below!

———

-Chapter 1-
Opens with a general overview of Native (specifically Crow women) reproductive practices and customs.

Notes:
Native Crow women would shelter and seclude themselves during menstruation, a practice that was pushed out by missionaries and government agents

Crow women were allowed to determine termination of a pregnancy

Indigenous tribes, such as the Crow tribe, often had superior maternal and infant mortality outcomes.

US Government intentionally starved the Crow people and indigenous lands by giving them inadequate rations

Early “pro-life” movement rooted in genocide of indigenous tribes (Native women had reproductive autonomy, which in turn led to healthier maternal, infant, and community health outcomes). At the same time, the demoralization and centuries of genocide—coupled with colonial forces creating more patriarchal policies and efforts on tribal lands—abortion became less common, in part due to the need for communities survival with growing maternal and infant mortality.





-Chapter 2-
Walks through the US government pushing native women into US reservation hospitals. More generally, it details the motives behind this push, in addition to the rise in the pro-life movement, was rooted in colonialism and the genocide of indigenous people.

Notes:
Mixed results of US reservation hospitals reducing Native infant mortality rates (IMR)





-Chapter 3-
This chapter was my personal favorite chapter! It introduces and follows Susie Yellowtail, one of the first five registered nurses in the US. We follow her journey as a midwife, a mother (giving birth in Crow culture and in a reservation hospital), then again as a US-registered nurse.

Notes:
“One irony of Yellowtail’s and other government employees’ emphasis on the superiority of the ‘trained physician’ is that due to understaffing and/or apathy, it was not uncommon for Native women in the 1920s and 1930s to birth in a government hospital with no physician present.”

“A cornerstone of the colonial project had been the imposition of patriarchal relationships and structures of governance on Native peoples in the West.”

Mass sterilization efforts / eugenics heavy in the 1920-30s. Decreased into the 1940s as the government focused on war efforts.

Following WW2, after decades of pushing indigenous women to attend white reservation hospitals, they closed many of these facilities.





-Chapter 4-
This chapter details how, following WW2, the Bureau of Indian Affairs wanted to push native women of childbearing age into urban areas/cities as part of grander assimilation process. However, by the late 50s/60s, while some native communities and women did remain in cities, there was remigration to reservations.
I particularly enjoyed this chapter as it frequently cites Chicago as an example (Chicago (Uptown) had a big Native community).

Notes:
Health insurance partly played an assimilation process. It favored younger child bearing aged women so they could attend hospital in cities (they also are cited as believing begging this demographic into cities was key to the grander assimilation process)





-Chapter 5-
This chapter walks through how the termination policies of the post-WW2 years threatened the political and cultural identity of native peoples and changed the ways in which native women (and in some cases, all women) received pre and perinatal healthcare.

Notes:
By 1960s, 98% of all native women gave birth in US hospitals.

Through the 1950-1960s, women across the US saw the gradual loss of autonomy in labor/birthing (not just among native women). For example, strapping women down in labor became common practice.

US physicians continued to blame poor infant health outcomes on native mothers being apathetic or ignorant





-Chapter 6-
The final chapter explores Native Women’s quest for control of reproduction from the late 1960s through the early 1980s.

Notes:
Federal agency for Indian Health Service (IHS) began offering family planning services in the 1960s

By the 1970s, IHS was primary prescribing IUDs over pill birth control. Many Native Women would discontinue services. There was a push for contraception devices and family planning. Coercion was common and another wave of sterilization began.

“Sterilization abuse was a symptom of a more fundamental problem: colonialism had diminished women’s personal and social power and destabilized their understanding of the meaning of Native womanhood.”

Increased availability of the reproductive technologies of birth control, abortion, and sterilization in government and contract hospitals in the late 60s/early 70s heightened the urgency of native women’s longstanding demands regarding competent and culturally sensitive health services

Beginning in 1970, physicians sterilized between 25%-42% of Native women of childbearing age of a six year period. This was mainly born from racialized fears about global overpopulation and the domestic welfare state that gained popularity in the post WW2 period





Epilogue
The epilogue outlines the continuing struggle for Indigenous women to decolonize reproductive health.

Notes:
The first conference of the Women of All Red Nations (WARN) was in 1978

“Studies have shown that women who travel more than an hour to give birth are more likely to have complicated deliveries caused by stress, and their infants have poorer health outcomes immediately following birth and throughout their first year of life.”

Tubal ligation (sterilization) rate is almost double that of white women among native women (of reproductive age)

American Indian Movement (AIM) founded in 1968

[JAYME · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a great read! It is one of the first books I've read for my Indigenous history class that had 100% new (to me) information, so it was very engaging and stimulating to read!

This book highlights the reproductive rights of women in the Crow nation, showing its development and decrease as reservations transformed indigenous culture. The role of governmental agencies and the federal government in general is crucial to the eradication of indigenous reproductive practices and access to healthcare. The formation of activist movements and governmental agencies is also highlighted in tandem with primary source-esque descriptions of Crow women's experiences dealing with these health-related changes.

Although this book has a lot of information in a small size, I think this is a great read for people who want to learn more about colonization and its specific effects. The information in this book is rarely included in the usual conversations of colonization, and I think it contributes refreshing and IMPORTANT perspectives.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic and nuanced worth with tremendously important research.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one of those books that added a hundred more things to my to read list. My brain is spilling over. It explains so much of how we got here and how much we have to do - and in a way that insists on connections. It's tragic that our public discourse around reproduction is solely about abortion. Missing the forest for the trees as usual.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

without a doubt, among the most incredible non fiction i have ever read. important and educational, careful in its wording and in its portrayal of both history and the present. read for my Gender in the US and Canadian West class at university and i cannot recommend this enough.

[David Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Focusing on birthing culture at Crow Nation, Theobald leads her readers through the substantial transition that Crow women--not to mention Indigenous women across the US--went through because of Indian Bureau and Indian Health Service intervention. Basically, this book is about how Crow women lost sovereignty over their bodies under the pretense that only modern medicine, ie white doctors and hospitals, could properly care for Indigenous women's children, from prenatal care to birth and childcare. At the same time, this book is about Indigenous resistance, namely the Crow women, female elders, and midwives who struggle against losing control over their children and culture. Sometimes they did this by simply refusing to go to the white man's hospital. Other times, as Susie Walking Bear and her husband Thomas Yellowtail, it was by Indigenizing healthcare on the reservation. Ultimately, as exemplified by the climatic chapter on Women of All Red Nations (WARN), Katsi Cook (Mohawk) and the modern midwifery movement, it's about seizing control over the care of their own bodies, and their children, in order to fight back against all of the liberties that have been taken with their healthcare, such as non-consensual sterilizations. So, then, why did I only give this book 4 stars? Because of how the discourse on Crow Nation women vanishes into the background by the time Theobald reaches the end of historical narrative. Even the epilogue, which purports at referencing current developments does little to account for the status of traditional Crow birthing culture as of 2018. According to one Crow woman I know, a former student of mine, traditional birthing culture, such as the use of midwives, is virtually non-existent now. What happened? Theobald does not give us an answer.

[Lahnabii · Rating 4 out of 5]

We read this for a book club called The Other Shelf, after asking our readers for recommendations for books around the theme of reproductive justice - this book did not disappoint.

I've only given it a four as it is written in a scholarly style and so sometimes I struggled with the details, but the truths that the author has found by interviewing native American women and also hunting down government records provides a picture of the brutal colonisation of people who lived on reservations, and how they birthed their children. It's really a damnation of the flexible childrearing culture belonging to ancient traditions as put upon by the federal state, taking us all the way through to forced resettlements, illegal sterilisations and the eventual modernisation and change towards more nuclear families, as well as an awakening activism to all those wronged by government policy. There's lots to think about when reading this work, and at 177 pages it's really doable. The cover art is by a relative of the women that the author interviewed, an artist called Ben Pease. And you can read my colleague's review here ! https://thecorrespondent.com/255/poli...

[Courtney B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good book that covers themes of the surveillance state, dangers of bureaucracy, and Native resistance/adaptability. It is also concise enough that students will actually read it. It gives a longer and more nuanced take on the forced sterilization narrative that I lecture on.

My only quibble is with the introduction, which is so far down the dissertation rabbit hole that my students can't really understand it.

[Josh Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written and critically important book. Outstanding research that draws from both archival and oral sources. It forces us to rethink how Native women shaped their own experiences with federal Indian policy.

[Lacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an in depth guide to the racism and government involvement in the lives of Indigenous people, specifically women.
I recommend for anyone interested in this subject, but take note that it is not the easiest of reads.

[Gail Johnson, Ph.D · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title is "Reproduction on the Reservation." But in my opinion, the book goes beyond the reservation and addresses all births in any race. Especially when it addresses fit individuals and unethical sterilization. Very deep. It's a good read for all adults.

[kingsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Sandra Oldfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written with a zoom in/zoom out approach to general history about reproductive rights and Indigenous as well as what happened on the Crow Reserve in early 20th Century to 1980