Jeff Colbourne
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 29/98) - Aboriginal mothers reportedly sterilized in the 1960s and 70s by southern doctors have been keeping to themselves.

Last week, NWT Health Minister Kelvin Ng said no victims have come forward so far, but the department is planning a public campaign this week to bring awareness to the issue.

"We're issuing a bit of a press release tomorrow and announcing a number to contact in the department for anybody that may have some concerns on it," said Ng on Thursday.

"We'll try and broaden it out a bit and we'll send some correspondence to the health boards with information so they can distribute that."

The government has "no clue right now" as to how many victims are out there but the campaign may give the department some indication as to how widespread the problem is.

Last month, Rene Fumoleau, a Lutselk'e priest, brought to light concerns he says Dettah women had with their infertility back in 1972.

"I just sent the information myself to (MLA) Roy Erasmus that in the 1970s I heard two aboriginal women in Dettah saying that 'I don't know what happened to me because in the past three or four years I never had any children.' Then they discovered that they had been sterilized," said Fumoleau.

Erasmus, who represents Yellowknife North, relayed this information to the legislative assembly during the last sitting.

Sterilization has been used mostly in European and Asian countries as a population control. But at least 2,800 people were sterilized between 1928 and 1972 in Canada if they had shown signs of mental deficiencies, disabilities or if they were "bad parents," said Erasmus.

About 700 of the sterilization victims are still alive and seeking compensation. In 1996, an Alberta woman, Leilani Muir, was awarded nearly $1 million after a court ruled she had been wrongly sterilized in 1959.

In March the Alberta government abruptly decided to pull a bill that would have compensated victims of forced sterilization.

The bill would have given victims of the sterilization, which was legal between 1929 and 1972, up to $150,000 each but remove their rights to sue for more money from the province.

If Northern women are seeking compensation for forced sterilization, money would not come from the territorial government.

"If there were to be any circumstances about individuals being sterilized without their consent, obviously the program, because it was done in Alberta, or done under the care of the federal government at that time, that would be taken into consideration," said Ng.