The 1960s are often referenced as a time of liberation in American culture. Free love, drug use, and social movements including women’s liberation and civil rights for Black Americans dominate popular discussion of the 60s. However, during this time of widening freedom for many social groups, Native American women were facing renewed discrimination and violence by the U.S. government.

According to a 2005 study published in Wicazo Sa Review, “from the early to mid-1960s up to 1976, between 3,4002 and 70,0003 Native women—out of only 100,000 to 150,000 women of childbearing age— were coercively, forcibly, or unwittingly sterilized permanently by tubal ligation or hysterectomy.”

Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, a doctor of Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, was the first to notice the pattern of forced sterilizations done by the Indian Health Services (IHS) system. In November of 1972, a 26 year old patient asked Dr. Pinkerton-Uri for a “womb transplant” because an IHS doctor had performed a hysterectomy on her when he diagnosed her with alcoholism. After seeing two other patients who were forced to undergo sterilization by the IHS, Dr. Pinkerton-Uri started to investigate.

One tactic that the IHS routinely utilized was to sterilize women without their consent during other, unrelated surgical procedures. For example, performing a routine appendectomy and then also doing a tubal ligation without consent. According to the American Indian Quarterly in 2000, at least 25% of Native women between the ages of 15 through 45 were coercively sterilized during the 1970s. This is an overwhelming portion of the population.

The Guttmacher Institute finds that today, 25.9% of women have undergone some type of sterilization surgery as their chosen method of contraception. For the rate of Native women who were forced to have a sterilization to be the same rate as the amount of women who haven chosen to have the procedure done demonstrates how far this systematic sterilization campaign went.

It is important to analyze this injustice in the broader context of the relationship between Native people and the United States government. Since the first  Europeans came to the Americas, they have sought to manipulate and eventually exterminate Natives. This happened in many regions of the Americas — indigenous people in what is now Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Central and South American countries were all targeted and brutalized by European settlers. In this way, the violence of forced sterilization is nothing new and in fact only continues the history of genocide of Native people by the U.S. government; according to international law, targeting racial groups and trying to prevent them from giving birth is an act of genocide.

This has had a grave impact on Native communities. Dr. Pinkerton-Uri found that the IHS “singled out full-blooded Indian women for sterilization procedures.”, and had a larger initiative to reduce the birthrate of Native American tribes. From the 1970s to the 1980s, the birthrate among all Native tribes dropped drastically.

The impact of forced sterilization on individuals and communities cannot be overstated. It is one of the most violent ways that the state can destroy a person’s bodily autonomy. Because of the severity of this issue, I will be writing in later columns about other groups that have been targeted by the U.S. government, including Black and Latina women.

Genuine Justice is a column about reproductive justice focusing on current events, historical perspectives and systematic racism in women’s healthcare. 

The post Genuine Justice: Sterilization Abuse of Native American Women appeared first on KRUI Radio.

The Revenant tells the tale of Hugh Glass, played by the Oscar-starved ageless hunk Leonardo DiCaprio. The film opens with Hugh and his half-Native American son, Hawk, hunting in the North American wilderness of 1823. We cut between them and their company, a group of American fur traders looking to haul their loot back to town. What follows next is one of the most intense action sequences I’ve ever seen, and one that I’m sure will have a profound influence on the way violence and action scenes are shot from now on. Hints of Birdman can be seen in these longer takes.

Where other films look to make jarring cuts quickly and often during action scenes, The Revenant often chooses to prolong the cuts. Instead of jumping between viewpoints, the camera helplessly pans around, slowly taking in all of the chaos enveloping it. This scene sets the tone for the hellish journey that unfolds over the next few hours.

These traces of Birdman aren’t from the director alone; Inarritu used the same cinematographer as his last award winner, Emmanuel Lubezki (who one an Oscar for both Gravity and Birdman, and is looking for the three-peat with The Revenant). Lubezki’s cinematography throughout the film is stunning. It manages to capture the enormous sky always looming above, and the endless sea of forest trees, while still managing to inspect and analyze the smallest insects and blades of grass. Cutaways to the starry night, streaked with Northern Lights, are intermingled with Malick-esque closeups on nature. The beauty and harshness of nature are both celebrated and feared through the camera, and the cinematography of the film is certainly among its strongest points.

Another major talking point of The Revenant is the performance of Lenoardo DiCaprio. Specifically, whether it will be rewarded with the beloved actor’s first Oscar. Unfortunately, most predictions seem to suggest that the award may once again slip through DiCaprio’s fingers. While his performance is undoubtably moving, I can’t help but feel that it was a bit one-dimensional. It’s clear that DiCaprio went through hell to bring the character to life, as can be seen by the brutal physical torment that he must endure though the film. However, the award is for best actor, not for most physically challenging role.

In the end, DiCaprio ends up crawling, grunting, and shuffling through most of the film. He speaks very little, and doesn’t do a whole lot beyond wince, cry, and scream. His performance as Jordan Belford in The Wolf of Wall Street was much more worthy of an award. On the other hand, Tom Hardy‘s portrayal of the shifty John Fitzgerald is much more nuanced. Part of this has to do with the characters themselves; Glass is a reserved protagonist who becomes driven solely by revenge, while Fitzgerald is a much more complex character. In the end, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Fitzgerald win Best Supporting Actor, and Leo come home empty-handed once again.

To truly appreciate The Revenant, you have to look at it as an experience more than a film. For the particularly squeamish, it may feel like an endurance test. The film is brutal and visceral. Not only does it feature extreme violence and some amount of gore, it refuses to allow the audience to distance themselves from it. That’s what separates The Revenant from something verging on torture porn. It doesn’t simply torment Glass for the audience’s sadistic enjoyment. Instead, the audience is set in Glass’s shoes and forced to feel his pain. By the end of the film, it’s hard not to feel physically and emotionally drained. And in conjunction with the film’s themes, and in particular its ending, the audience feels as if a feat has been accomplished; a journey complete.

But what was the final prize, and was it worth the heavy cost?

Click here to see if The Revenant is playing in a theater near you. Check out the trailer for the film below:

The post Cinema Spotlight: The Revenant appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Within three consecutive days this month on campus, I heard some of the most prejudiced bullshit by ignorant, white people that I’ve ever heard.

I can’t say I’m very surprised. Although Iowa City has touted its ranking on many lists as a liberal haven in the Midwest, prejudiced attitudes pervade our society, especially on a college campus with so many people from different parts of the world.

Wednesday, October 7th: While eating my sub-par pizza at Burge, I heard two kids next to me talking about international students, specifically those from China. They both agreed that Chinese students insisted on remaining anti-social and only hanging out with other Chinese students, making them “kinda racist.” I whipped my head around and squinted my eyes as if to say “Seriously?” and that seemed to shut them up.

Firstly, nonwhite people cannot be racist to white people because only the latter group occupies a privileged place in society benefiting from institutional structures. Only white people can be racist.

Watch this short, blunt for more information.

Secondly, people don’t owe you shit! The individuals you’re referring to probably knew that you’re an unfriendly, prejudiced ass-hat with whom spending time would not be enjoyable!

Refer to the graphic below for more information.

These kinds of racist conversations probably happen thousands of times a day all across campus, but the more surprising and in my opinion, important, interactions occur in the classroom.

Thursday, October 8th: One of my classes required that students perform speeches regarding food advertisements’ strategies effectiveness. Because my TA showed examples critiquing the unhealthy nature of fast food and connecting that to weight gain, 75% of my class read speeches that drew a direct connection between unhealthy eating habits and all fat people, and denounced those body types.

This argument relies on a post hoc fallacy, and more importantly, makes certain assumptions about fat people that enforce western beauty standards and through fat-shaming. As someone whose body does not conform to western beauty standards, I sat through 13 speeches that expressed disgust with my body type, and also connected the shape of my body to poor eating habits.

I do not eat fast food. I will mooch a fry from my friends or get a cookie from McDonald’s, but my diet does not consist of regular trips to Burger King, Wendy’s or any other fast food place. I am also healthy, and the fact that all of these people including my teacher correlated my appearance which does not appeal to Eurocentric beauty expectations to my dietary choices pisses me the fuck off.

How dare you police my body and impose your arbitrary, oppressive expectations on me? How dare you judge a person’s life choices based on physical appearances you have been brainwashed to value over other ones? Fat people do not exist to make you feel better or act as a threatening example for you. There is no wrong way to have a body.

My teacher, the only person with authority in the room, failed to say anything. I did not expect her to interrupt a speech to highlight the offensive nature of the topic, but she didn’t say ANYTHING! Not even after the whole unit ended! When I wrote about my frustration in my project feedback, she finally acknowledged how upsetting the content of the speeches may have felt to students in the class and simply said she “wondered how we can do better.”

Passivity seems to be the primary approach that TAs use to deal with difficult issues like these, since the same kind of situation happened in another one of my classes.

Friday, October 9th: The most incredulous example of racism I experienced that week happened in the classroom, again. During a discussion about postcolonial criticism, one white guy in my English class described the mass murder of indigenous people with European diseases as biologically “upgrading the Native Americans.” Another white guy immediately called him on his racist rhetoric, which I appreciated, but I wasn’t satisfied for long. The second white guy proceeded to pride himself on the number of nonwhite authors he has read, but when I asked him which authors he liked, he said the names were too long and confusing, so he “didn’t bother learning them.”

In ten minutes, one white man erased thousands of years of the slaughter of indigenous people and somehow managed to frame it into the idea of American exceptionalism: the idea that this country has no colonial past and was founded on pure intentions. Then, another white man single-handedly disrespected all nonwhite author whose name had an unfamiliar sequence of letters, thereby disregarding the creators of literature which markedly reduces the influences of the texts. How fucking rude.

I impatiently waited for my TA to say something and ask people to choose their words more carefully, acknowledging the problematic discourse. However, he basically coddled the two men and told them mistakes were acceptable and to learn from them. That’s not enough for me.

I understand that a fine line exists between attacking a student and educating someone on their prejudiced ideas, but as an educator, he had a responsibility to figure out his role in those kind of situations and carry it the fuck out. As a woman of color in a predominantly white male class, I do not and cannot have the sole responsibility of being the spokesperson for all people of color and calling out racism, especially in an environment where I am outnumbered.

I met with my TA about my uncomfortable feelings during the discussion section, and told him that if that was how he would deal with slightly difficult interactions between students, I did not want to attend class anymore. He sympathized with my feelings and told me he wished he had been more prepared of what to say at the time. He also expressed apprehension about policing that sort of speech in the classroom, and worried about imposing his political beliefs on his students.

I’m pretty skeptical of that concern, but he does beg the question about how to separate the two. In my mind, the comments those two white guys made conveyed racist ideas and they offended me. They are objectively wrong. Others may not share this idea, so where does that leave us? This is a question that requires the attention of academia immediately.

According to this Guardian article by Rachel Williams, less than 10% of university professors are nonwhite which means that white professors dominate almost all conversations regarding race.

If they cannot distinguish the forcing of their political beliefs from preventing prejudiced comments among their own community, college campuses won’t have this ability either, and nor will college classrooms: a place where students’ minds should stretch and expand and become educated.

Racism and prejudices still exist; that’s pretty much common sense. However, when supposedly educated people with authority allow these attitudes to pervade a setting like a classroom, the problem becomes systematic and arguably state-sanctioned. We must work to decolonize classrooms, where students and teachers should engage in productive, educational conversations. This task lies with academia, and needs their attention now.

The post Decolonize Your Mind: In the Classroom appeared first on KRUI Radio.