Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonization in the Long Twentieth Century by Brianna Theobald (review)

Historian Brianna Theobald's well-researched Reproduction on the Reservation demonstrates how Native women negotiated and challenged the United States government's interference, surveillance, and regulation of their reproductive experiences. She examines the lived experience of these imperialist policies through the almost 100-year history of Elizabeth (Lizzie) Shane Yellowtail's family on the Crow Reservation in southern Montana. Through oral histories, ethnographies, and archival research, Theobald compellingly argues America's settler "colonial politics have always been reproductive politics" (4).

The book's six chapters alternate between detailing larger US policies regulating reservation life in the Midwest and West to regarding the enactment of these policies through the lens of Yellowtail and her descendants' lives. By doing so, Theobald attempts to demonstrate that "policy and politics obtain meaning and import when they intersect with women's lives" (10).

Chapter 1 profiles Crow childbirth practices, kin and family relations, and gender roles at the turn of the century. Intervention in Crow reproductive politics on the reservation begins as the federal government unsuccessfully (though they try for a century) attempts to terminate the practice of "flexible childrearing" (19), whereby a child's biological parents allow other kin to rear their child. Interestingly, chapters 2 through 6 parallel the larger history of American reproductive politics—the move away from home births to hospitals, the introduction of "scientific motherhood," debates around abortion, and the reaction against medicalization, though with a focus on the gnarly nuances specific to Native women's struggle for reproductive justice. For example, the nonconsensual sterilizations beginning in the 1930s through the 1970s, which affected an estimated 25 to 74 percent of Native women, including Lizzie Yellowtail's daughter-in-law, Susie. Further nuances included assimilation policies, which leftmany Native families in debt after childbirth or forced them to return to reservation hospitals to give birth. Through all these abuses, Theobald shows the long, remarkable resilience and tenacity of Crow and other Native women as they advocated for their bodily and cultural autonomy.

Yet the book falls short of Theobald's goal to center women's lives with regard to politics and policy. The Yellowtail family's reproductive experiences are merely the backdrop for a story of government policies. However, this should not dissuade readers who are interested in the history of the Great Plains, Native American studies, or gender studies, as the book is an important contribution in understanding the past and current struggle toward reproductive justice for all.