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New Mexico is taking on an investigation into the sterilization of Native American women through coercion, deception, or by merely carrying out procedures entirely without consent. The state is mainly looking at time in the 1970s following the establishment of the federal Office of Population Affairs and a policy change that increased reimbursements for outside doctors contracting with Indian Health Service (IHS) facilities for each procedure. Native Americans were included in groups targeted for sterilizations because of the false impression they were less intelligent and that they were not as productive members of society as other groups. In 10 years, Native American birth rates were more than halved. Other states and Canada have broached the topic of forced sterilization that tried to formalize racist policies in the name of public health. New Mexico is the first to take aim at the role IHS clinics played in carrying out the policies.
GUESTS
Elena Giacci (Diné), historical trauma trainer and anti-sexual violence advocate
Josett Monette (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians), cabinet secretary for the State of New Mexico Indian Affairs Department
Chief Don Stevens (Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation)
Jean Whitehorse (Diné)
Break 1 Music: Intertribal (song) Cree Confederation (artist) Pakosiyimitan (album)
Break 2 Music: Place I Call Home (song) Native Roots (artist) A Place I Call Home (album)
There is zero aka NO evidence that a single Abenaki person in Vermont was cohered or forcefully sterilized….ever…. not one…. Don Stevens in also not Abenaki or Native… I know this because I spent three years looking for that evidence… there is none… Don Steven’s is a liar. here is an op ed with all the links the to evidence of this fact… please, please read and follow up – this theft of native trauma he perpetrates is so absolutely messed up https://vtdigger.org/2024/10/10/richard-witting-any-truth-and-reconciliation-must-begin-with-truth/
He’s a fake Abenaki and is 99 . 98 settler
https://youtu.be/wr8YgKTbOcA
This video is of Donald Warren Stevens Jr. own close relative. She and her sister have done extensive genealogical evaluation and genetic testing and found no Abenakis. She goes on to clarify that she new Delia, her grandmother, the same grandmother as Don Stevens. And that he is making up familial narrative about her being “Abenaki”, that she was hiding from the Vermont Eugenics because she was allegedly targeted for sterilization. She was not. The VES knew who she was no matter what first name she chose to go by on any records. They knew where she lived, and how many children she’d had. She was never hiding from anyone! My family was in the Vermont Eugenics Survey too, and they were indeed sterilized, in both NH and Vermont! NOT because they were Abenakis either. From my own research into the VES records, I cannot discern any Abenakis in Don Stevens Jr. lineage. He needs to stop lying and putting on this “Abenaki” persona. Some of his relatives know the better, the reality and truth of their shared grandmother!
Disappointing that Native America Calling platformed Don Stevens who has fraudulently claimed a culture that is not his to claim, who also perpetuates a factually incorrect narrative about Vermont’s eugenics program that targeted poor and disabled people. Irony that it wasn’t the eugenics program that targeted Abenaki but the pretendians themselves who are erasing the actual Abenaki to replace them. Please reference Vermont Public’s “Brave Little State” research series titled “Recognized”.
Kwai, Donald Stevens is a pretendian. Appropriation to the extreme. There is no truth in what he states and this program content allows him to perpetuate the lies is unconscionable. Many allies and the Abenaki Nation of Odanak have disproven his claim to being Abenaki. And his claim to eugenics even his own immediate family disputes his fake fantasy fabrication of being a Abenaki. His genealogy was conducted by renowned scholars and peer reviewed. He has not disputed the evidence produced by the Grand Council of Odanak and Wolinak because it’s all based on truth and facts. That Donald Stevens is 99.9% European without any lived experience of growing up in an Abenaki village or community. Donald Stevens cousins state that he made up a fantasy and it took off in his head.
The Nulhegan group started as a Facebook group and then. Non for profit, he was a grown man who decided to take over from Luke Willard whose family state exactly the same thing, we were never “Abenaki”
Please the serious human rights violations that are harming our Nation.