Decolonizing Indigenous disability in Australia

Abstract

Cultural diversity and social inequality are often ignored or downplayed in disability services. Where they are recognized, racial and cultural differences are often essentialized, ignoring diversity within minority groups and intersectionality with other forms of oppression. This is often an issue for Indigenous Australians living with disability. This paper argues that understanding Indigenous disability in Australia requires a critical examination of the history of racism that has systematically disabled most Indigenous people across generations and continues to cause disproportionate rates of impairment. Approaches that focus on the cultural ‘otherness’ of Indigenous people and fail to address taken-for-granted normative ‘whiteness’ and institutional and discursive racism are unable to escape that history.

Keywords:

• racism
• Indigenous Australians
• eugenics
• decolonizing