By Zenith Wolfe

Ladysmith resident John Ward is hoping to change the narrative around Indigenous disability studies with his new book, launching at Wakefield Library this weekend.

The 350-page ‘Indigenous Disability Studies’ is a compilation of essays that explore how Indigenous elders, government workers, teachers, and students understand and navigate disability. The launch event for the book, whose chapters represent 38 Indigenous peoples from 20 countries, will be hosted at 3 p.m. on Feb. 1.

Ward is a federal HR Advisor, a University of Sydney professor, and the book’s editor. He says most research on Indigenous disabilities comes from Canada, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. This encouraged him to expand out into central and southern America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania to include as diverse a range of stories as possible.

“I wanted this global perspective to have an impact so that when the readers would look at it, they would be able to link things in their own ways and through their own perspectives,” he says.

The research for this book started in 2016 with Ward’s PhD in Education at the University of Ottawa. Ward, a self-described “mixed settler” of Algonquin ancestry with ADHD and dyslexia, decided to dedicate his PhD studies to how Indigenous Elders understand learning disabilities.

Three of the Elders he interviewed for his PhD would go on to write chapters for ‘Indigenous Disability Studies’. Ward says his book will contribute to an emerging field that can help Indigenous peoples process the traumas of Canadian education systems and prevent future abuse.

“I was abused by my principal to the point that I can never walk by that school today. I’ve heard other kids who have stories far worse than I ever had. Even the Elders had residential school experiences that were traumatizing,” Ward says. “In the area of Indigenous disability healthcare, a lot of people lack services and specialized equipment.”

The writing process was also a form of reconciliation for some writers, Ward says, because publishers have habitually dismissed them.

“You can’t write people off. You have to understand them,” he says. “Many of these people who are first time writers, it helped them to connect with readers. This was a form of healing.”

Ward says some writers take a “two-eyed seeing” approach to disability. Many Indigenous peoples hesitate to identify as disabled because Western labels uphold colonial systems of oppression, he says. This approach allows Indigenous contributors like Mohawk Elder Tom Dearhouse to instead incorporate traditional teachings to address the limits of labels.

According to Ward, Dearhouse writes about how many Indigenous people consider children with Down syndrome blessings who bring families together with their happy, empathetic attitudes.

“From [Mohawk] oral history, every child that was born was a gift from the creator,” Ward says. “The spirit went into the body knowing fully what challenges would happen later on, so who are we to speak against the creator?”

Three of the book’s writers will attend the launch event. Elder Annie Smith St-Georges will discuss her chapter on how Indigenous children with learning differences are taught. Kevin Morgan will talk about the colonial implications of the label “blind,” and Lexi (Giizhigokwe) Nahwegiizhic will explore the relationship between neurodiversity and the Seven Grandfather Teachings.