'They had no right': Inuit women recount experiences past and present of forced sterilization

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 15, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

While a nationalist enactment seeks to way cases of forced sterilization of Indigenous peoples crossed Canada, Inuit women successful the North accidental the signifier hasn't ended. 

Karen Couperthwaite, who lives successful Happy Valley-Goose Bay, N.L., delivered her 2nd lad via C-section 9 years ago. At the time, she said she asked for tubal ligation – a surgical process that would necktie her fallopian tubes and forestall aboriginal pregnancies. 

When her household decided to person a 3rd child, she made an assignment to person the ligation reversed. 

That's erstwhile she said she recovered retired that her tubes hadn't been tied – they'd been removed instead. Her doc made the find portion speechmaking notes successful her aesculapian record from the surgeon who performed the operation, she said. 

"He had to springiness maine quality that I didn't person my fallopian tubes near to effort and conceive naturally," she said. "It's precise shocking and hurtful, and the sting is inactive with maine adjacent though it's been 2 years now." 

Couperthwaite registered with the Survivors Circle for Reproductive Justice, a non-profit launched successful 2024 that helps survivors and advocates for reproductive justness for First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. 

It's gathering a registry to service arsenic an authoritative grounds of forced sterilization successful Canada. 

Claudette Dumont, the co-chair of the Survivors Circle for Reproductive Justice, said that "removing a woman's quality to person children is simply a very, precise sedate injustice." 

"These women are traumatized. They proceed to suffer. They were suffering successful silence, and this has to beryllium addressed," she said.

That's wherefore the organization held a gathering successful Quebec astatine the commencement of March, wherever registered survivors were capable to stock their experiences with 1 different – immoderate of those experiences were much recent, similar Couperthwaite's, portion others happened decades ago. 

An illustration of coercion

Cecilia Papak, who lives successful Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, told CBC News she was considering registering with the organization. 

She gave commencement to her girl portion connected a level from Whale Cove, Nunavut, to Winnipeg. She said she was sent backmost to Whale Cove, her location astatine the time, but was yet medevaced backmost to the southbound due to the fact that she continued to person atrocious bleeding. 

There, she said, a doc told her she should halt having children. She refused the country astatine the time. She said doctors kept telling her that if she had much children, she wouldn't beryllium capable to ticker her kids turn up and wouldn't conscionable her grandkids.  

"It was truthful hard for maine to judge that," she said. 

"I wanted to ticker my kids grow, truthful I had nary prime but to judge the country they offered maine due to the fact that I whitethorn not unrecorded agelong if I proceed having children." 

Now, Papak says she is blessed to person grandchildren — but she wishes she ne'er had the surgery. 

'They had nary right'

Alice Simik, who besides lives successful Rankin Inlet, remembers the infinitesimal erstwhile arsenic a pre-teen, her parent Annie Alogut told her that she'd had the tubal ligation process done successful 1970. Simik said her ma lone recovered retired six years after, erstwhile a doctor, a caregiver and an interpreter asked her if she wanted her tubes untied. 

"I felt wounded for her," Simik recalls. 

Simik said women and their ain bodies should get to determine erstwhile it's clip to halt having children. 

"They had nary close to conscionable necktie her tubes."

Couperthwaite said she was shocked erstwhile she realized she wasn't the lone 1 who was sterilized against her volition – that her concern wasn't a one-in-a-million benignant of case. 

"How tin you, you know, astir play God with somebody's assemblage and somebody's aboriginal and not adjacent consciousness the request to pass them of thing that is truthful life-changing and life-altering?" Couperthwaite said. 

Couperthwaite said she's been sharing the Survivors Circle's website with different women who've told her astir akin experiences of being sterilized. She wants them to cognize there's enactment disposable if they request it.