For Indigenous women, in Nevada and nationwide, losing rights nothing new

By Jessica Hill

Thursday, July 21, 2022 | 2 a.m.

Barbara Hartzell, a Chemehuevi Paiute from the Chemehuevi Tribe of Lake Havasu in California and a member of the Las Vegas Indian Colony, chose to be a young mother about 20 years ago.

“My decision to be a mother was dependent on my grandmother,” Hartzell said during a discussion with other Indigenous women this month in Nevada. “When I let my grandmother know, she said, ‘That’s not the worst thing to happen to you. You have support.’ She gave me that peace, but not everybody has that. Not everybody has a support system.”

Some Indigenous women, whose tribes’ have a complicated relationship with abortion, have mourned the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that granted women the right to end a pregnancy. But for them and other women of color, losing reproductive rights is nothing new.

“I’m not surprised by the Supreme Court,” said Taylor Patterson, executive director of Native Voters Alliance of Nevada.

The U.S. government has a long history of forcibly sterilizing women of color, said Patterson, adding that her mother was sterilized against her will when she tried to take advantage of government programs for those with low income.

In the 1970s, U.S. doctors sterilized 25-42% of Native American women of childbearing age, according to the University of Rochester. The women often did not consent, or the sterilizations were conducted “under great duress.”

“She was not given a choice to be sterilized,” Patterson said. “(The government) made it clear that they don’t want our babies. They don’t want Black babies, they don’t want brown or Indigenous babies. They want white babies.”

Nevadans have their reproductive rights protected under a state statute voters passed in 1990, and women have the right to choose whether to have children.

For many Indigenous women, views on abortions are complicated, Patterson said.

“(There’s) this idea that we must be very liberal, democratic, and that is just not the case,” Patterson said.

Jonnette Paddy, who works with Native Voters Alliance Nevada and Indigenous Women Rising, a group that helps Indigenous women access abortions, said views on abortion vary tribe by tribe. Paddy is Navajo and after talking with Navajo midwives and doulas, she learned that the tribe traditionally practiced abortion, although they did not have a specific word for it.

“If you’d ask a Navajo, they would probably say abortion is bad and not to do it,” Paddy said. “But that goes against our traditional teachings, because the Navajo is a pretty colonized tribe. … It was more of a survival tactic to assimilate and completely give in rather than give any type of opposition.”

“We had abortions,” Paddy said. “We didn’t have them nearly as much as we do now just because the climate was different. … It was completely the choice of the mother. They had much more bodily autonomy.”

Patterson, who is a member of the Bishop Paiute Tribe, said many Paiutes were forced to assimilate and have taken up the Christian faith, even though that is not what the tribe believed traditionally.

“It’s shocking to me what our traditional values were and how it is nowadays,” Patterson said.

Indigenous women do still get abortions, Paddy said, but it is more stigmatized. There are also added barriers for them to get an abortion. Most tribes are in rural areas in Nevada, and rural areas have a lack of access to abortions and other types of health care, she said.

“I get upset when people say, ‘just Uber or Lyft there.’ It’s just not possible in those communities,” Paddy said. She would like to see clinics offer some type of help, such as discounting the cost of services if a patient has to travel long distances.

Telehealth, where a patient can meet with a doctor online and be prescribed abortion pills that are sent through the mail, can also help, but there is a lack of internet connection for some tribes Many tribal members do not have actual addresses, Paddy said. They might have a PO box that they have to drive far to get to, and they might not have a car.

“There’s definitely efforts that need to be made to provide better access to tribal communities and rural communities in general,” Paddy said.

Indigenous Women Rising, a group that started in 2018, has seen an increase in people seeking an abortion. The group has helped about 600 people get an abortion, often covering the full cost or the majority of the cost, Paddy said. The organization also provides financial support for traveling and has a midwifery fund. The group can help Indigenous people get support after an abortion by connecting them with a spiritual adviser of their tribe.

As women across the country lose access to reproductive health care, people have suggested tribal governments should open abortion clinics on their reservations, since tribal governments are sovereign, separate from state and federal governments with their own rights and rules of governing.

But those suggestions are not coming from Indigenous people, Patterson said, and in reality, no tribal leadership wants to offer abortion services to tribal members and nonmembers alike. Tribes want to limit the number of non-natives coming onto reservations, putting their people at risk of crimess, Paddy said.

The majority of murders of Native women are committed by non-natives on Native land, according to Native Women’s Wilderness.

In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt warned tribes in May not to open abortion clinics on their reservations, but there “wasn’t even a whisper about doing that,” Paddy said.

“Sovereignty is only a pro for our communities when it’s convenient for white people,” Patterson said. “Sovereignty is great when it comes to getting abortions on tribal land. And when it comes to dictating what we want, whether that’s putting up solar panels or putting up a pipeline or whatever the case may be, everyone is suddenly against it.”

Tribes, though, feel they have lost some of that sovereignty recently. The Supreme Court this spring narrowed tribes’ sovereignty in an Oklahoma case by ruling that state authorities were allowed to prosecute non-Natives who commit crimes against Natives on tribal land. Previously the court had said that only tribal courts, or the federal government, could prosecute such crimes in the absence of a tribe’s approval.

“You’re superseding our rights to govern,” Hartzell said. “It’s also acting like our tribes do not have our law enforcement agencies and tribal courts. We already have our systems.”

Patterson argues the decision limits tribal government’s power and adds to the complexities that Indigenous people face when they are victims of crimes.

“Literally all we have as a people is our sovereignty,” Patterson said. For generations, Indigenous people have fought for their sovereignty, going to the Supreme Court with case after case and demanding sovereignty, she said.

“We can fight back now,” Patterson said.