Indigeneity as disability: Siobhan Senier, ‘Disability, Blackness, and Indigeneity: An Invitation to a Conversation’, College Language Association Journal, 64, 1, 2021, pp. 166-173 | settler colonial studies blog

Indigeneity as disability: Siobhan Senier, ‘Disability, Blackness, and Indigeneity: An Invitation to a Conversation’, College Language Association Journal, 64, 1, 2021, pp. 166-173

13Apr21

Excerpt: Arguably, Indigenous Disability Studies performs similar work. One landmark book does the same kind of heavy duty as Christopher Bell’s Blackness and Disability, and it was published just shortly after his groundbreaking volume: in Native American Communities on Health and Disability Lavonna Lovern and Carol Locust (Eastern Band Cherokees) argue that “for centuries tribes have emphasized the normality of people with difference.”¹ Scholars following their lead have sought to describe longstanding, tribally specific approaches to (dis)ability; of Cherokee descent, Sean Teuton suggests that “in many oral traditions, disability is a paradoxical source of power.”² Other scholars have shown how specific kinds of bodymind impairment have been produced by settler colonialism: For example, residential schools produced post-traumatic stress and intergenerational trauma; massive out-adoption of Indigenous children has led to psychic conditions like “split feather syndrome”; the destruction of traditional food sources has created diabetes and other illnesses.

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