Introduction
This chapter introduces and defines several of the book’s key terms, including biological reproduction, colonialism, settler colonialism, and reproductive justice. Articulating the book’s overarching arguments, the chapter contends that colonial politics have been and remain reproductive politics. It further argues that Native women have navigated pregnancy and birthing in myriad ways that disrupt any tidy dichotomy between “traditional” and “modern” birthing in the twentieth century. The introduction begins with an overview of the founding of the Women of All Red Nations (WARN) in 1978 and suggests that the roots of this 1970s activism are not only in Native struggles for sovereignty and self-determination in post-World War II decades but in Native women’s reproductive-related activism throughout the century.