The Sterilization of Leilani Muir

1996. The film The Sterilization of Leilani Muir, directed by Glynis Whiting, is released by the National Film Board of Canada. It runs to 47 minutes in length and is available through the National Film Board of Canada and various Alberta libraries, including the Alberta Government Library. The documentary has won multiple awards.

The documentary traces the life of Leilani Muir, an Albertan women who lived in the provinces Provincial Training School during the 1950s and 1960s. Here, Muir was administered a single IQ test, and eventually sterilized under the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta, as a young teenager, without her consent. Muir later learned about her sterilization after leaving the institution, when she also learned her IQ test results were false. In 1995, she became the first person to file a lawsuit against the Alberta government for wrongful sterilization, and won her case.

Muir's case against the government of Alberta raised awareness of eugenic practices in Alberta. The Sterilization of Leilani Muir attempts to further understanding of those practices, and the acceptance of eugenic science in the early 1900s (NFB, n.d.).

Interviewees in the documentary include Leilani Muir, Stephen Jay Gould (author of the The Mismeasure of Man), Dick Sobsey of the University of Alberta, David Thomas King, Margaret Thompson (a member of the original Alberta Eugenics Board), and Muir's lawyers, Jon Faulds and Sandra Anderson. Muir has since also released an autobiography, A Whisper Past.

-Amy Dyrbye

The Sterilization of Leilani Muir

1996. The film The Sterilization of Leilani Muir, directed by Glynis Whiting, is released by the National Film Board of Canada. It runs to 47 minutes in length and is available through the National Film Board of Canada and various Alberta libraries, including the Alberta Government Library. The documentary has won multiple awards.

The documentary traces the life of Leilani Muir, an Albertan women who lived in the provinces Provincial Training School during the 1950s and 1960s. Here, Muir was administered a single IQ test, and eventually sterilized under the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta, as a young teenager, without her consent. Muir later learned about her sterilization after leaving the institution, when she also learned her IQ test results were false. In 1995, she became the first person to file a lawsuit against the Alberta government for wrongful sterilization, and won her case.

Muir's case against the government of Alberta raised awareness of eugenic practices in Alberta. The Sterilization of Leilani Muir attempts to further understanding of those practices, and the acceptance of eugenic science in the early 1900s (NFB, n.d.).

Interviewees in the documentary include Leilani Muir, Stephen Jay Gould (author of the The Mismeasure of Man), Dick Sobsey of the University of Alberta, David Thomas King, Margaret Thompson (a member of the original Alberta Eugenics Board), and Muir's lawyers, Jon Faulds and Sandra Anderson. Muir has since also released an autobiography, A Whisper Past.

-Amy Dyrbye