Facing an Uncomfortable Truth: The Forced Sterilization of Native Women

Opinion

Last year, in preparation for the United States’ 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14253. The order directs federal agencies to remove what the administration calls “disparaging” or “divisive” signs, plaques, and markers from federal lands, including national parks and public monuments.

The order has also been used to initiate an audit of exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution to ensure that what officials describe as “negative” portrayals of American history are removed.

In practice, this effort amounts to an attempt to reshape the nation’s historical narrative — highlighting triumphs while downplaying or ignoring painful truths such as genocide, land theft and broken treaties.

When it comes to American Indians and Alaska Natives, America carries many uncomfortable truths — including the history of Indian boarding schools, where generations of Native children endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. So severe were these experiences that longtime Native American activist Leonard Peltier (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) recently said his time in boarding school was worse than his nearly five decades of incarceration in federal prisons.

Another uncomfortable truth is the record of U.S. government practices from 1907 through the late 20th century that allowed some tens of thousands of Native women to be subjected to procedures that left them unable to bear children — often without their free, prior and informed consent.

Native News Online’s Senior Health Reporter Elyse Wild wrote about this uncomfortable truth this past week.

Wild wrote about Dr. Connie Redbird Pinkerton-Uri (Choctaw/Cherokee), a Native physician who discovered an alarming number of hysterectomies performed on Native women at Indian Health Service facilities. In her own independent investigation, she reported as many as one in four Native American women had been sterilized without consent between 1960 and 1978.

Pinkerton-Uri later left clinical practice and earned a law degree, becoming one of the first Native American women trained in both medicine and law.

With expertise in both fields, she spoke to newspapers, medical associations, and legal groups, boldly declaring that the U.S. government was “using the vehicle of healthcare as a tool of genocide.”

In 1975, Dr. Pinkerton-Uri persuaded U.S. Sen. James Abourezk (D-S.D.) to request a federal investigation by the Government Accountability Office, then known as the General Accounting Office.

The GAO’s review confirmed that the Indian Health Service had sterilized a significant number of Native American women. The study examined sterilization practices in four of IHS’s 12 service areas over a four-year period from 1973 to 1976 and found that 3,406 Native women had been sterilized — including 3,001 of childbearing age.

Wild also wrote about two women whose work led to New Mexico lawmakers last month passing a measure directing the state’s Indian Affairs Department and the Commission on the Status of Women to investigate the history, scope and ongoing impacts of forced and coerced sterilizations of women of color by the IHS and other health care providers. 

The agencies are expected to submit their findings to the governor by the end of 2027.

The history of forced sterilization of Native American women is messy and painful, but it should not be buried.

Understanding this history is essential.

There are good reasons why the truth is important. 

First, it honors the women whose bodies, lives, and futures were violated. For decades, they were silenced, disbelieved, and blamed. Recognizing their suffering is a necessary act of respect and justice. It gives survivors the language to name what was done to them and the chance to reclaim their narratives.

Second, knowing the truth exposes the systems that enabled such abuse. The IHS, federal policies and medical institutions all played a role in allowing these violations to occur. Learning about these failures reminds us that unchecked power — disguised as “care” — can lead to systemic harm.

Third, confronting the past prevents its repetition. History teaches that when governments ignore accountability, vulnerable communities suffer. By documenting forced sterilizations and other abuses, the country strengthens the principles of informed consent, human rights and ethical health care — values every American should defend.

Finally, acknowledging these uncomfortable truths strengthens our democracy. A nation that celebrates liberty cannot erase the injustices committed against its First Peoples. Truth is not optional; it is the foundation for justice, healing, and a future where history is neither sanitized nor forgotten.

This is why measures like New Mexico’s investigation matter — they represent small but meaningful steps toward accountability, and the country should pay attention.

Americans can still be proud this Fourth of July while confronting and understanding the ugly history of how Native Americans were treated. Pride in our country doesn’t require blind worship. It grows from a commitment to democratic ideals and from people willing to make the nation live up to them — even while acknowledging its failures.

Thayék gde nwéndëmen — We are all related.

Related