Conclusion

This chapter briefly draws together key threads of the book. It underscores the need to focus less on FASD as an individual hardship and more on the structures, systems, and historical forces that have constructed and maintain the phenomenon. A key narrative of this book is that FASD in Indigenous communities needs to be understood within a postcolonial framework. In particular, we maintain that the traumas and ‘lived adversities’ associated with colonisation are passed on to succeeding generations through socialisation, but through changes to the methylation and characteristics of DNA. Eradicating FASD requires a multi-disciplinary team approach, but also, and most urgently, it requires a radically decolonising practice. It cannot be ring-fenced off from Indigenous demands for sovereignty and self-determination.