Prosthetic settler colonialism: Caroline Lieffers, ‘Disability, Spirituality, and Settler Colonialism: The Story of Joseph La Flesche’s Artificial Leg’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 99, 3, 2025, pp. 457-487 | settler colonial studies blog

Prosthetic settler colonialism: Caroline Lieffers, ‘Disability, Spirituality, and Settler Colonialism: The Story of Joseph La Flesche’s Artificial Leg’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 99, 3, 2025, pp. 457-487

24Nov25

Abstract: This article is a microhistorical examination of a settler medical technology in an Indigenous community: Umonhon leader Joseph La Flesche’s artificial leg, which he wore from the early 1860s until his death in 1888. This case study illustrates how La Flesche’s disability and prosthesis were deeply entangled with Euro-American challenges to Umonhon ways of life, including relational care, land use, and spiritual practices. Although the artificial limb, from a Euro-American perspective, was a medical technology to resolve disability, from the perspective of some Umonhon the limb represented unwanted changes to their land and culture, changes that also compromised crucial community rituals and engendered new forms of “spiritual disablement.” The medical technology’s significance cannot be removed from the larger context of settler colonialism and its ableist assessment of Indigenous bodyminds, lands, beliefs, and ways of life.

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