There is no worse blind than he who does not want to see. But facts are stubborn. In 2013, Indigenous women in Saskatchewan denounced a practice, that of forced sterilization, hitherto killed and hidden. This breach had led the federal government to create a working group on cultural security. Quebec had refused to take part, considering itself sufficiently aware, in addition to being proud of not registering any violence of this type on its territory.
He is caught in his own trap. In 2021, journalistic investigations had lifted the veil on a handful of similar stories in Quebec. The publication on Thursday of a research report based on 35 testimonies from five nations or peoples here leaves no doubt. Its authors have identified at least 22 Indigenous women who, between 1980 and 2019, allegedly underwent forced sterilization under the guise of consent that was neither free nor informed, if not absent. Others deplored obstetrical violence, including forced abortions.
This would only be the first visible part of a taboo practice that is difficult to document as it is accompanied by deep stigmata. Ministers Ian Lafrenière (Aboriginal Affairs) and Christian Dubé (Health) condemned these revolting practices and promised to carry out the necessary checks. They reiterated their commitment to include the notion of cultural safety in the Act respecting health services and social services, a promise that is unduly long overdue.
They did not go so far as to pronounce the angry words, printed in full in this report. Its authors defend the need to adopt Joyce’s Principle (guaranteeing Aboriginal peoples a right of equitable access, without discrimination, to social and health services) and to recognize systemic racism (also named frontally in the Viens report) which , according to them, would have allowed these medical wanderings.
These semantic frictions are holding back the advance of cultural securitization, which is certainly not going fast enough. It is imperative to hear the denunciations of Aboriginal women, to allow them to obtain redress, but also to give them back full power over their bodies and their lives. Above all, we must stop imagining that we are dealing with despicable past practices. This report is formal: this revolting control has persisted over time and it must end now.