Women of All Red Nations
It was established in 1974 by Lorelei DeCora Means, Madonna Thunderhawk, Phyllis Young, Janet McCloud, Marie Sanchez and others.
Additionally, WARN emphasized the high rate of health issues like birth defects, miscarriages, and deaths on Native American land from nuclear mining and storage.
[5] In their annual newsletter, WARN published “The Left of Life” to draw attention to the ongoing forced sterilization of Indigenous women.
[7] As a result of the efforts of WARN to bring attention to these practices, in 1979 regulations governing sterilization were issued by the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
[8] In 1980, WARN issued a report indicating a statistical correlation between the high levels of pollution on Pine Ridge Reservation and an increased incidence of birth defects, abortions and cancer.
This region had been used for uranium mining, served as a military gunnery range and had been subjected to herbicide and insecticide contamination from off-reservation farms.
[10][11] Prior to forming their own organization, some of the women who founded WARN were activists working within the American Indian Movement (AIM) and were active in the Wounded Knee Insurrection of 1973.
[citation needed] Two other co-founders, Janet McCloud and Phyllis Young, had also taken part in other Red Power movement activism.
[21] WARN conducted a community survey in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, close to the border of Nebraska.
The survey found an abnormally high rate of miscarriages, leukemia, and cancer mortality in the population of the reservation and surrounding areas.
[20] Other adverse health effects were also found in the area: 60 to 70 percent of children who were born in the Pine Ridge Hospital suffered respiratory problems as a result of underdeveloped lungs or jaundice.
The radiation from mining in the Black Hills in South Dakota and Edgemont contaminated the Cheyenne River, a source for the Lakota Aquifer.
[20] WARN linked the issue of coerced sterilization to a continuing attack on the Indigenous population in order to acquire their land for resources such as uranium.
[23] Many of the women did not understand what they were agreeing to, or were coerced or threatened into agreement, or were not in the proper mental state to give consent when asked to sign sterilization forms by medical professionals.
In 1970, the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act led to the forced sterilization of 25% of Native American women during the six-year period that it was enacted.
[2] Marie Sanchez—the chief tribal judge of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation—explains that the causes of this go much deeper than bodily autonomy: the problem stems from colonialism itself.
In 1976 the U.S. General Accounting Office found that from 1973 to 1976, 3,406 Native American women underwent coerced sterilization procedures in just four of the twelve IHS service areas.
[24] The total number of coerced sterilizations during this period across all twelve IHS service areas was estimated to be roughly 3,000 per year.
The main political actions taken by WARN are educational improvements and opportunities, healthcare, and reproductive rights for Native American women.
