The Birth of Tatanka

 Excerpt from Where White Men Fear to Tread

"I wiped the blood from his face, ears, and eyes and held him close.  I wouldn't let the nurses have Tatanka back.  I began to sing to him.  One of the white women in the delivery room ,perhaps and anesthesiologist of the head nurse said something like, "I suppose we'll have to listen to these savage chants now."   

 

It was these very white nurses who worked alongside white BIA medical doctors as they sterilized Indigenous women after giving birth, often without their consent or knowledge, and who also tried to convince new, Indigenous mothers to put their children up for adoption.