ABSTRACT
I am a survivor of a race of peoples that have been brutally reduced to near extinction by the practice of forced or non-consensual sterilization of our women of child-bearing ages. Some time ago the Samish tribe in Washington State filed with the Department of the Interior a petition to place themselves as a tribe of people on the list of endangered species. Some folks laughed, thought it a good joke those “Indians” were playing on the government. Others thought it a good publicity stunt. I thought it was telling the truth. A voice rang in my head on the day I read the newspaper article about the Samish people. The voice was Paula Gunn Allen’s, another Native woman; we had talked many times about genocide and the true meaning of it, and this practice to Native peoples the world over. Even though some men were sterilized, for the largest part sterilization abuse has been used against the women in Native America and across the world. Thereby leading Paula Gunn Allen to rename the practice gynocide—using the root gyn to signify women.
