Towards the decolonisation of disability: A systematic review of disability conceptualisations, practices and experiences of First Nations people of Australia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In many settler-colonial countries, Indigenous people do not access disability services at rates commensurate with disability prevalence. Existing research suggests that services often do not reflect Indigenous values and social practices, impacting on accessibility. Furthermore, disability services have historically been implicated in processes of colonisation. There is an urgent need to decolonise disability services. Understanding Indigenous knowledge and experience of disability is a necessary step towards achieving this. We systematically reviewed the disability conceptualisations, practices and experiences of First Nations peoples of Australia. Twelve studies met inclusion criteria. There was a consensus among these studies that Western constructs of disability do not resonate with many First Nations people across Australia. The studies reported that many First Nations people conceptualise most disabilities as unremarkable conditions that reflect the normal range of human diversity, although some conditions may be associated with social stigma. Inclusive attitudes and practices of caregiving in First Nations families facilitate the participation of First Nations people with disabilities in family and community life. However, ableism and racism in broader society combine to exclude many First Nations peoples with disabilities from public spaces and from labour markets. Disability services regularly fail to reflect First Nations values and social practices, and can lead to further disempowerment and marginalisation due to diagnostic processes; displacement from country and communities; gendered discrimination; and poor relationships with service providers. We argue that intersectional experiences of colonialism, racism, ableism and sexism, particularly in disability services, can lead to the marginalisation of First Nations participants and families. The decolonisation of disability services requires services to embrace diverse First Nations values and practices associated with human capability, social participation and caregiving. Decolonising disability services also necessitates First Nations control of the governance of disability services and reform across service, organisational, systemic and conceptual levels.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.021 | 0.072 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.016 | 0.015 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".