Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, November 9th, 1974, a woman by the name of Dr. Connie Redbird Ury, gives an impassioned

speech at a board meeting in Oklahoma City of the Indian Health Services. In this speech she

proclaims quote we have a new enemy and the enemy is the knife. What she's

referring to is the fact that Dr. Yuri had just visited an IHS facility in which she

claimed that up to a quarter of Native American women who had passed through

that facility had been forcibly sterilized. They'd come in for one procedure or to give birth and then without

their consent been given hysterectomy's or other procedures that left them

sterile and this moment began a years long campaign to expose and investigate the practice of forced sterilization among Native American communities, not just at the facility that Dr. Urey had visited,

but throughout much of Oklahoma

and other Native American territory.

Some of the numbers here are just startling,

and some, I will say, are a little contested,

but it is clear that this was a widespread practice and as Dr.

Urey stated, this idea that up to a quarter of Native American women of childbearing

age in these regions had been sterilized is just kind of stunning and over the coming years

there would be protests congressional hearings there's a march on Washington that

featured tens and tens of thousands so let's talk about these forced

sterilizations

among Native American communities targeting Native American women.

I do want to thank our listener Matthew

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