We don't know how many women have been impacted or affected by forced sterilization.
Number one, when we went to our community and talked to the women in our community and sampled only a small group of women, many of them had no idea what their experiences were. They hadn't shared that with their fellow Métis sisters. They were ashamed of the decisions they made.
Part of our culture is that motherhood, the bearing of children and the bringing forward and passing on of our knowledge and traditions, is a big part of who we are within our culture. That gets stripped away from them. They don't want to talk about it or they're ashamed to share the fact that they're no longer able to be a part of that.
I just want to say that it really does bode well that we need to do research. Many of the medical institutions and staff don't want to talk about this. I know that the term “doctors” has been raised here, but it isn't just doctors. Some of this forced and coerced sterilization isn't coming from just doctors. It may be doctors who are doing the procedures, but the coercion is starting much earlier on, with social workers and other people within the hospital institutions.