3 Decolonizing Indigenous Reproductive Healthcare and Politics: Indigenous Femin
3 Decolonizing Indigenous Reproductive Healthcare and Politics: Indigenous Feminist Perspectives and Practices
Indigenous Feminist Perspectives and Practices
Introduction
In recent years, reproductive healthcare policies and reproductive justice advocacy have been an important part of popular discourse. Since the overturn of Roe V. Wade, abortion and reproductive rights have been a major point of contention, and the state’s consistent inability to provide adequate healthcare has negatively affected many people with uteruses. The evolution of reproductive politics in the United States is intimately interwoven with the colonization of Indigenous peoples and the ownership of land and bodies. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive and critical analysis of the history of Indigenous reproductive healthcare and politics in the United States, with an emphasis on the efforts of Indigenous feminists to achieve reproductive justice.
As the history of Indigenous reproductive politics is assessed, the main lens through which this paper aims to contextualize Indigenous reproduction is through the impacts and legacy of colonization. Where and how do the pervasive impacts of colonization influence the past and present of Indigenous reproductive healthcare and politics? Indigenous author Luhui Whitebear notes that “Indigenous feminisms ask us to recognize…how [different systems of coloniality] impact us both historically and in the present while also imagining futures in which we are liberated from these violences” (Whitebear, 2). Carmela Roybal, Executive Director of the Native American Budget and Policy Institute of New Mexico, emphasizes the importance of this radical contextualization centered in many Indigenous feminisms’ efforts to achieve a decolonial horizon, specifically a future of reproductive justice. Radically contextualizing the multifaceted histories, relationships, and resistance efforts within Indigenous reproductive healthcare and politics requires an expansive and inclusive analysis, knowing that there are innumerable considerations across the social, political, and cultural landscape of Indigeneity in the West.
Theoretical Framework: Contextualizing Indigenous Reproductive Politics within the Legacy of Colonization
These manifestations of coloniality in Indigenous reproductive healthcare and politics have served as the launchpad for transcultural-decolonial efforts that are continuously developing and enacted by Indigenous and other transnational feminists. As described by Mignolo and Walsh, decoloniality “is rooted in the praxis of living and in the idea of theory-and-as-praxis and praxis-and-as-theory, and in the interdependence and continuous flow of movement of both…. Decoloniality, in this sense, is wrapped up with re-existence” (Mignolo & Walsh 2018, 7). There is no singular way in which decolonization is enacted, and arguably needs to be intentionally cultivated across a range of social and political structures using a variety of to