ABSTRACT
In this representational chapter, we aim to achieve several objectives. First, we name the ways in which children have been excluded from both critical disability and postcolonial studies. This denial and omission have had grave implications and perpetuated silence around disabled racialised childhoods. Second, we deconstruct and unpack the ways in which the ongoing colonial project has served to oppress and marginalise disabled Indigenous families while, at the same time, creating contexts and conditions that are disability-producing. Third, we unpack the ways in which disability meanings among Indigenous people may differ significantly from Euro-centric understandings of health, disease, disability and illness. Fourth, we outline the contributions that stories and the disability justice approach may have for opening up new research spaces that are attentive to the dire need to de-centre whiteness from the systems, practices and policies of everyday life. Finally, we discuss what decolonised health care spaces for Indigenous disabled children and families might look like. Our writing collective includes a racialised first-generation Canadian of South African ancestry (Fiona), two Indigenous Anishinaabe-Kew women from Wilwemikong (Dyan) and Nipissing First Nation (Madalyn), as well as a Canadian white ally scholar who is a parent to a disabled child (Ronald).
