Special issue of Disability and the Global South: Intersecting Indigeneity, Colonisation and Disability
Guest Editors: Karen Soldatic (The Critical Institute) and John Gilroy (University of Sydney)
Deadline for abstracts: 1st September 2016
There is growing global recognition of the role of disability in shaping the lives of Indigenous peoples and the significance of having an Indigenous cultural identity in shaping the lived experience of disabled people from Indigenous backgrounds. Recently, we have been witnessing a burgeoning public policy environment, transnationally and at the nation scale, that seeks to combine the intersecting features of Indigenous cultural identity with the lived experience of being disabled. For example, the 14th UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (2015) featured heavily the impact of disability on the lives of Indigenous peoples including their ongoing ability to engage and perform customary practices, cultures and traditions. And the recent appointment of Aunty Gayle Rankine to the United Nations’ newly established international network of Indigenous peoples with disability is a testament to the growing international focus on the intersection of indigeneity and colonisation on the lived experience of disability.
This special issue seeks to open a space for critical debates and reflections on the issues and challenges of bringing together Indigeneity and disability as an intersecting identity. The overall aim is to question and challenge existing approaches to modern understandings of disability, how it is regulated, governed and experienced once the cultural identity of being Indigenous is positioned at the fore.
We are keen to bring together researchers, practitioners and activists, in particular those who are working at the edges of disability yet at the centre of Indigenous practice. We hope to engage theoretical and empirical work situated within local knowledges, spaces and places. We encourage contributions exploring a range of themes including (not exclusively):
- Experiences in engaging in/with Indigenous communities in relation to disability
- Experiences of discussing and locating disability within an Indigenous standpoint
- Ethical concerns and practices: modernity, medical science and Indigenous dispossession
- Understanding, defining and conceptualising disability for research, policy and statistical purposes
- The limitations of intersectional approaches for Indigenous/Disability praxis
- Indigenous methodologies, standpoint and ethics in relation to disability policy and research
- The white-settler enterprise and the Indigenous disability experience
- Relationship between Indigenous Poverty, Dispossession, Alienation and Disability
- Access to services and impact on Indigenous disabled people, including social, physical, emotional, psychological and/or spiritual well-being
- Making research ‘productive’: from knowledge generation to local transformative action and practice
Those wishing to submit an article, please email an abstract to Karen Soldatic (ajks123@bigpond.com) and John Gilroy (john.gilroy@sydney.edu.au). Please insert ‘Submission for Intersecting Indigeneity and Disability Special Issue’ in the subject line.
Manuscripts will be sent anonymously for double peer review, and comments and recommendations relayed to authors through the editors.
Deadline for abstract submission: 1st September 2016. Full papers due by 1st April 2017 for first round reviews.