Indigenous and Deaf People and the Implications of Ongoing Practices of Colonization: A Comparison of Australia and Canada

Abstract

In the growing field of colonial and anti-colonial research, many parallels have been drawn between Westernized countries including Australia and Canada. In both of these countries, there is considerable academic, community and governmental recognition of historic, and continuing, colonizing of Indigenous peoples and the subsequent impacts on Indigenous cultures. Terms such as transgenerational trauma and intergenerational trauma give language to the ongoing impact of colonization on communities, which in turn serves to legitimize the need for mental wellbeing supports and associated funding. However, there are other minority communities that are similarly oppressed and colonized but do not experience the same legitimization. One such community is the Deaf community. Deaf people continue to experience systemic oppression and colonization within our hearing centric society. Building on the work of Batterbury, Ladd and Gulliver (2007), we extend discussions on the parallels between Indigenous and Deaf communities of Australia and Canada, drawing on the established and commonly discussed link between the impact of racism and colonization on (mental) health. We connect these discussions to modern instances of colonization including the aspect of deaf education to illustrate a “living” mechanism through which colonization continues to impact mental wellbeing in the broader Deaf community.