By Jeannine Taleyratne (she/her)
Content warning: mentions of First Nations women experiences, disabilities, and domestic and family violence
Acknowledgement: I would like to acknowledge that I have written this blog on the lands of the Wurrundjeri people. I acknowledge my positionality as a non-Indigenous, South Asian woman, and write this blog with an open-mind to learn more about Indigenous people’s nuanced lived experiences. We are committed to our beliefs of continuous learning and accountability, and acknowledge that moving forward, we will work to include voices of people with lived experience.
Indigenous women with disabilities are identified as having experienced domestic violence at a much greater rate than the rest of the population (Cripps, Miller and Saxton-Barney, 2010). According to Aboriginal Justice Council (1999), 69% of assault cases against First Nations women are carried out by their spouse or partner. Compounding this issue, is that Indigenous women with disabilities experience additional barriers to the disclosure and seeking of help. While the statistics highlight a higher rate of Indigenous women with disabilities as victims of abuse, little is known about their experiences of violence and their access to services (Cripps, Miller and Saxton-Barney, 2010). This article will examine that although current policies are attempting to integrate and improve family violence (FV) services in Victoria, there is a lack of services that help to navigate the challenges Indigenous women with disabilities may face as victims of family violence. It will analyse the current family violence services, the impacts of discrimination through a critical disability lens, and the nuanced relationship between disability and gender-based violence.
Defining Disability-Specific Violence
First Nations women with disabilities may experience disability-specific violence, such as denial or overdosing of medication, food, and water, confinement and restraint, alteration or control of assistive equipment, or threats to withdraw care (Milberger et al., 2003; WWDA, 2007). However, there is growing evidence that First Nations women with disabilities also experience intimate partner violence. Control and power are central to the definition of intimate partner violence (Healey et al. 2013). Research suggests that intimate partners’ use control and power in the form physical (punching, kicking, pushing, unwanted sexual acts, breaking Domestic Violence orders or making a form of threat), emotional, psychological, sexual, and economic control/abuse (Healey et al. 2013).
How Current Initiatives are Responding to FV
In Victoria, community led partnership initiatives were established as a response to supporting Indigenous women with disabilities and victims of FV. This enabled a collaboration between disability, FV, and Indigenous community sectors, which strive to ensure their “accessibility needs” are an essential avenue for a responsive service (Frantz et al, 2006). Government policies are attempting to integrate and improve the delivery of FV services by addressing the need for appropriate standards of care and the rights of victims. In doing so, it aims to increase protection orders, personal assistance, mobility aids, emergency accommodation, and supported decision making and communication requirements, including the comprehension of information (e.g., the need for sign language interpretation and available materials online) (Healey et al, 2013). While these services aim to address various challenges Indigenous women with disabilities may face as victims of FV, many have claimed them to be ineffective in meeting their complex needs.
In fact, few services are knowledgeable or experienced in this respect. As a result, they are pushed from Indigenous, to FV to disability services, without any one service taking accountability for coordinating the care and support they may need. It was reported that “partnerships that work within family violence do not work with disability services” (Cripps, Miller and Saxton-Barney, 2010). What this means, is that services opt out of their duty of care by referring their clients to other organisations. While this referral process may appear to be therapeutic, victims have received no form of care or service during this process.
The Lack of Access and its Impacts
The lack of cross-sector collaboration, notably between gender-based and disability violence, has frequently been flagged as a significant barrier in responding adequately to First Nations women with disabilities experiencing violence. This is important because government policies have failed to ensure better service delivery in practice, as it does not effectively engage with the experiences and circumstances of women in difficult situations asking for help. Due to this, women often return home to their partners and continue to live with violence, because getting access is just too hard (Cripps, Miller and Saxton-Barney, 2010).
The lack of access within FV services perpetuates the structural inequalities Indigenous women with disabilities experience. As such, the oppression of Indigenous women takes different forms and are interlocked within relationships between gender, race, and disability, which in turn makes oppression a sociological and psychological condition (Steele, 2017). This is important to consider, because the relationships between patriarchal structures and colonialism indicate just how systemic this issue is (Baldry and Cunneen, 2014, p. 9). Moreton-Robinson and Walter reveal that the lives of Indigenous women are framed by the “omnipresence of the patriarchal white sovereignty” (Moreton-Robinson and Walter 2009, p. 94). What this means, is that the exclusion of Indigenous women from these services are justified on the basis of the coloniser’s ‘superior’ race, and ‘rightful’ dominance of the colonised race (Baldry and Cunneen, 2014). As such, racial discourses of Indigenous women have remained gendered, whereby Indigenous women are separated from other women because of perceived biological and culturally defined racial differences; such as being incompetent mothers or having relationships that are naturally prone to violence and dysfunction (Baldry and Cunneen, 2014).
Patriarchal Colonialism and Pathologising Victims
The common stereotypes and misconceptions that surround violence against Indigenous women have clearly been constructed through the eyes of colonial structures, especially when it comes to the source and reasoning behind FV. For instance, Indigenous women are have historically been presented as slaves, chattels to Indigenous men, who are “inherently violent” and the product of violence, while British men have been presented as the “rational” and “heroic rescuers” (Baldry and Cunneen, 2014). Unfortunately, we see this stereotype weave itself into government policies in a way that only perpetuates misinformation about Indigenous cultures, and does little to make standings for Indigenous women experiencing violence. The 2007 Government Intervention Policy into FV, for instance, clearly highlights the government’s racialised and gendered understandings of Indigeneity, where Indigenous men were blamed for abuse, while women, were seen as passive victims (Baldry and Cunneen, 2014). What this ultimately shows is that the way governments have approached policies in FV are indicative of their institutionalised racism, as they fail to acknowledge that the experiences of Indigenous women are a product of patriarchal colonialism.
What policies need to acknowledge, is that historical and colonial legacies, such as the loss of land and traditional culture, the disempowerment of Indigenous elders, breakdown of kinship systems and Aboriginal law, and entrenched poverty and systemic racism, are in fact, clear factors underlying the high rates of domestic violence in Indigenous communities (Memmot et al, 2001). Acknowledging this group of women within policy and practice, therefore, is incredibly important, as it will not only increase their visibility, but also highlights their needs and rights to service inclusion.
Critiquing Through a Critical Disability Perspective
Using a critical disability approach is necessary when discussing this issue, as it can critique the ways in which being designated as ‘disabled’ means medical discourses can individualise these settler colonial practices. Critical disability is a methodology that involves scrutinising the social norms that define impairments, as well as the conditions that stigmatise attributes in particular societies, rather than bodily or mental impairments (Schalk, 2017). This biomedical deficit model of disability is shaped by stigmatised attitudes that constructs bodies as, not only pathological and risky, but also as fixed, ongoing, and embedded in the body (Steele, 2017).
These attitudes and beliefs shape the way FV services become inaccessible and hinder Indigenous women with disabilities (Steele, 2017). One woman claims that “often people are just ignorant, and think that the disability [our] women have is black… and that their disability isn’t even seen” (Cripps, Miller and Saxton-Barney, 2010). We can see the way lack of access excludes and prohibits Indigenous women, as opposed to including the ‘normal’ and mentally capable white women to be entitled with full access (Cripps, Miller and Saxton-Barney, 2010; Steele, 2017). These representations of disability as ‘abnormal’ results in the further systemic violence towards Indigenous women (Steele, 2017). Furthermore, the racialised discourses create discursive effects by pathologising Indigenous women’s behaviours and life circumstances, where returning to their partners becomes inherently and permanently a risk to themselves.
Self-determination and Intersectionality
So how can organisations and governments develop functional and sustainable FV services for Indigenous women with disabilities? Self-determination strategies that centre the experiences of Indigenous women with disabilities can help navigate the challenges they face as victims of abuse. Too often FV services operate through a Western framework, which reduces Indigenous relationships as inherently dysfunctional, while ‘othering’ First Nations women with disabilities. Self-determination models, however; focus on intersectional methodologies that centre the experiences of First Nations women with disabilities, rather than speaking on behalf of, and to, the sovereignty of Indigenous women (Bunda, 2020; Baldry and Green, 2008). Instead of legitimising white patriarchal systems, which govern Indigenous women’s lives, self-determination methodologies focus on listening to the lives of Indigenous women with disabilities, and their experiences with FV (Bunda, 2020; Baldry and Green, 2008). In doing so, these methodologies are able to frame the strategies through a strength-based approach, enabling Indigenous communities and families to promote healing, and create a safe and supportive environment.
Overall, while government policies are attempting to integrate and support victims of FV in Victoria, there are a lack of services that help navigate the challenges Indigenous women with disabilities may face as victims of family violence. In this article, I analysed the current FV policies explored how the lack of access for Indigenous women legitimises patriarchal structures and colonial legacies, critiqued this through a critical disability lens, and ultimately showed how a self-determination framework can foreground intersectionality.
If you would like to read further into this topic, please see the following reference list below.
References:
Aboriginal Justice Council. (1999). Our Mob Our Justice: Keeping the vision alive. The 1998 Monitoring report of the Aboriginal Justice Council on the Recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Aboriginal Justice Council Secretariat, Perth.
Baldry, E., & Cunneen, C. (2014). Imprisoned Indigenous women and the shadow of colonial patriarchy. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 47(2), 276-298.
Bunda, T. (2020). The sovereign Aboriginal woman. In Sovereign Subjects (pp. 75-85). Routledge.
Cripps, K., Miller, L., & Saxton-Barney, J. (2010). 'Too Hard to Handle': Indigenous Victims of Violence with Disabilities. Indigenous Law Bulletin, 7(21), 3-6.
Disabilities Network. Retrieved from http://www.wwda.org.au/buildingevidence1.pdf
Frantz, B. L., Carey, A. C., & Bryen, N. D. (2006). Policy accessibility of Pennsylvania’s victim assistance programs. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 16(4), 209–219.
Green, S., & Baldry, E. (2008). Building indigenous Australian social work. Australian Social Work, 61(4), 389-402.
Healey, L., Howe, K., Humphreys, C., Jennings, C., & Julian, F. (2008). Building the evidence: A report on the status of policy and practice in responding to violence against women with disabilities. Melbourne, Australia: Women’s Health Victoria and Victorian Women with
Memmott, P., Stacy, R., Chambers, C., & Keys, C. (2001). Violence in Indigenous communities.
Milberger, S., Israel, N., LeRoy, B., Martin, A., Potter, L., & Patchak-Schuster, P. (2003). Violence against women with physical disabilities. Violence and Victims, 15, 581–590.
Moreton-Robinson, E., & Walter, M. (2009). Indigenous methodologies in social research. In M. Walter (Ed.), Social research methods (pp. 95–109). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schalk, S. (2017). Critical disability studies as methodology. Lateral, 6(1), 6-1.
Steele, L. (2017). Disabling forensic mental health detention: The carcerality of the disabled body. Punishment & Society, 19(3), 327-347.
Women With Disabilities Australia. (2007). Forgotten sisters: A global review of violence against women with disabilities. Canberra, Australia: Author.