Decolonizing Indigenous disability in Australia

Whānau hauā: Reframing disability from an Indigenous perspective

“…While potentially person-centred and participatory, the ICF is marred by inappropriate cultural processes and a lack of interventions based on Indigenous people's understanding of disability and their needs (Hollinsworth, 2013). The ICF's utility is less relevant in a Mäori cultural context (e.g., it does not recognise the importance of ancestral connectivity and community collectivity).…”

“…To avoid incongruence with Indigenous needs, users of the ICF need to possess culturally specific knowledge for interpretation against its standardised classifications (Bell, Lindeman, & Reid, 2015;Wright-St Clair et al, 2012). Given the diverse Indigenous contexts and understandings of disability, the ICF is considered unreliable (Harwood, 2010;Hollinsworth, 2013). Harwood (2010) makes it clear that universal approaches do not work.…”

How well does the National Disability Insurance Scheme respond to the issues challenging Indigenous people with disability?

“…On the other hand, this model has been criticised for neglecting some dimensions associated with disability, including the gender and culture of people with disability (Terzi, 2004), and the lived experience of the people living with mental illness and intellectual impairment (Hughes, 2009;Shakespeare, 2006). These dimensions are significant for research about how disability affects Indigenous people, who have been "disabled" and are still suffering from impairments caused by colonialism ORIGINAL ARTICLE THEORETICAL RESEARCH (Hollinsworth, 2013). Accordingly, the theoretical framework of this study also drew on perspectives from post-colonial theory.…”

“…The historical impacts of colonisation on Indigenous individual, family and community continue to challenge the lives of many Indigenous people with disability and their trust in governmental systems (Ariotti, 1999;Clements, Clapton, & Chenoweth, 2010;Gething, 1994;Gilroy, 2009;Gilroy, Donelly et al, 2016;Hollinsworth, 2013;Kendall & Marshall, 2004;King et al, 2014). Services generally organised pursuant to the medical model provide support to people with disability from a health perspective and do not take into account the cultural and lifelong needs of Indigenous people with disability and their families (Ariotti, 1999;Farrelly & Lumby, 2008;Greenstein, Lowell, & Thomas, 2016a, 2016b.…”

Native American communities on health and disability: borderland dialogues

“…Native American communities on health and disability: borderland dialogues, by Lavonna L. Lovern and Carol Locust, New York and Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 242 pp., $95.00, ISBN 978-1-13-730860-3 There has been a lot of recent work on decolonising disability studies theoretically and methodologically (Meekosha 2008;Grech 2009;Connell 2011), and indigenous 1 disability in particular (Hollinsworth 2013). In 2013 there was a special issue of Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies focusing on disability and indigeneity, where it was noted that there were 'no book-length studies of indigenous representations of disability' (Senier and Barker 2013, 124).…”