4. Indigenous Interventions in Neurodivergence, Storytelling, and Care
Hybrid
Meeting ID: 944 5606 1052
Passcode: 291945
Panellists: Milo Ira, Patty Douglas & Haley Clark, Lisa Fernandes, Sree Lekshmi Mini Suresh
Chair: Nat Paterson
Milo Ira | Stonecutters and Pollinators: Reimagining Neurodivergent and Gender-Diverse Indigenous Care
Abstract: Neurodiversity studies have largely been shaped by colonial medical and psychological paradigms, erasing Indigenous conceptualizations of neurodivergence as relational, land-based, and embedded in kinship. This paper critically intervenes by centering Indigenous decolonial epistemologies to reframe neurodivergence, gender diversity, and disability as integral to Indigenous resurgence. Drawing on findings from the Understanding Affirming Communities, Relationships, and Networks (UnACoRN) survey, we examine how Indigenous Two-Spirit, neurodivergent, and sexually and gender-diverse (SGM) youth navigate systemic erasure while reclaiming nation-specific ways of being. Using the Anishinaabe concept of pyro-epistemology, which frames decolonization as a controlled burn that clears colonial underbrush to regenerate knowledge, we propose the nocturnal pollinator as a metaphor for neurodivergence. Just as moths and bats pollinate in ways overlooked by dominant ecological narratives, neurodivergent Indigenous people sustain community knowledge outside of colonial visibility. Cree understandings of autism as a relational identity and Métis perspectives on queerness as emergent and interconnected disrupt settler definitions of normalcy, pathology, and productivity. We critique the stonecutter model of healthcare, which violently reshapes Indigenous bodies and minds to fit colonial ideals, advocating instead for a land steward model of care rooted in reciprocity, respect, and interconnectedness. This work positions Indigenous neurodivergence as a site of resistance and resurgence, where youth mobilize digital kinship networks and self-determined identities to reject settler-colonial hierarchies and reclaim expansive, non-pathologizing frameworks of health and being.
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Patty Douglas, Haley Clark | Re•Storying Neurodivergence through Participatory Decolonial Multimedia Storytelling
Abstract: [Name] is a multimedia storytelling project re-imagining neurodivergence beyond Western deficit perspectives through the arts. Given the stigma, violence, poverty and exclusion for marginalized neurodivergent individuals, our focus since 2020 has been partnered research with Indigenous communities in Canada, England and Aotearoa New Zealand to understand what decolonial approaches to neurodivergence might mean.
Thinking with films made by neurodivergent Indigenous and ally participants (family, teachers), this paper engages decolonial critical neurodiversity and disability studies (Chapman, 2023; Ineese-Nash, 2020) to challenge Western individualist and developmentalist conceptions of ‘normal’ and re-centre marginalized ontologies of neurodivergent Indigenous communities. We argue that these communities share parallel histories of being outcast, dehumanized and institutionalized, and have not yet had the opportunity to contribute, through participatory storytelling, their understandings (Bevan-Brown, 2014; Ineese-Nash, 2020). Our approach offers understandings of neurodivergence that are more expansive than Western paradigms, placing relationality at the centre and affirming neurodivergence as fundamental.
Our project engages participatory action research, centering reciprocity and leadership by neurodivergent and Indigenous scholars and community (Fletcher-Watson et al., 2019). Through two digital storytelling workshops held in 2021-22, we explored the question, “What does it mean to decolonize neurodivergence?” Here, we co-analyse themes emerging in 12 short videos made by Māori, Métis, Cree and settler storytellers in Aotearoa New Zealand, the UK and Canada. We also describe our method as it unfolded and was shaped by the workshop focus and participants.
We offer findings that challenge—and provide alternatives to—Western deficit paradigms underpinning education, as well as alter understandings of neurodivergence that centre interdependence, community care, gift-oriented ontologies and the non-human world as a living entity (Ineese-Nash, 2020). This work is significant because it expands critical neurodiversity studies to include decolonial approaches and urgently intervenes into Western colonialist legacies in education to support neurodivergent flourishing and belonging.
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Lisa Fernandes | Decolonizing Method and Methodology: QuantCrit as Exemplar for Consideration in Critical Neurodiversity Studies
Abstract: As ideas coalesce around critical neurodiversity studies, we must consider not only its potential for knowledge generation, but the cultivation of a rich methodological tapestry that invites and supports the development of a greater diversity of thinkers, builds bridges to other critical disciplines and positions the research squarely within a transformative paradigm. Though traditionally, the critically-focused disciplines have been qualitatively focused, I provide provocations toward the consideration of the potential role for an interdisciplinary engagement with a critical enactment of quantitative methods, which may provide a nascent opportunity to support social justice objectives by countering and displacing policy discourses based in deficit narratives that result in social reproduction. I discuss the genesis of quantitative criticalism and provide examples of Indigenous quantitative research. I focus on the transdisciplinary usage of QuantCrit, an emerging intersectional and critically-based approach to quantitative analysis, which shares activist roots, theoretical underpinnings and liberatory aims with Critical Neurodiversity Studies. Its intersectional nature may help to clarify Critical Neurodiversity Studies as a site that encompasses a wider range of voices, both in terms of neurodivergence itself and one’s contextual and social locations. The potential synergies of this model in terms of its tenets, modeling and applications may initiate conversations about measurement and analysis that might be integrated into a neurodiversity-affirming methodological frame, conceptualizing a future for the discipline that is both intellectually and methodologically rich, and supportive of a wide range of scholars as the best hope of achieving its research aims.
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Sree Lekshmi Mini Suresh (Online) | Contesting Normalcy: Stigma, Discrimination, and the Bipolar Self in Indian Pathographies
Abstract: This paper examines the bipolar self as a site of contestation within the framework of Critical Neurodiversity Studies, engaging with the lived experiences of individuals diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder (BPAD) in India. Drawing on pathographies such as Swadesh Deepak’s "I Have Not Seen Mandu: A Fractured Soul-Memoir" (2021), Shreevatsa Nevatia’s "How to Travel Light: My Memories of Madness and Melancholia" (2017), Vijay Nallawala’s "A Bipolar’s Journey: From Torment to Fulfillment" (2015), and K.S. Ram’s "Warrior: The Bipolar Battle" (2015), this paper foregrounds how BPAD patients navigate the tension between medical, social, and self-perceptions of normalcy and non-normalcy. The bipolar self, which shares a form of neurodiversity referred to as ‘neurominority’ (Rosqvist et al., p. 1), is in continuous negotiation with medical classifications and lived realities that resist pathologisation. This divergence can manifest stigma both internally—as internalised stigma—and externally—through systemic discrimination and social marginalisation. By analysing pathographies as both personal testimonies and acts of resistance, this paper examines how neurodivergent identities are shaped by—and challenge—dominant psychiatric and cultural frameworks. In India, where psychiatric discourse intersects with indigenous and cultural understandings of madness, psychiatric patients are often subjected to deep-seated stigma and systemic discrimination. By situating these pathographies within the larger discourse of neurodiversity, this paper interrogates the epistemic boundaries between pathology and identity, normalcy and deviation. It also considers how colonial histories, globalised psychiatric practices, and local cultural narratives converge to shape experiences of mental distress and resilience. Through an analysis of these texts, this paper advocates for rethinking BPAD beyond medical determinism, emphasising the agency, complexity, and diverse lived experiences of ‘neuro minorities’ in the Global South.
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Speaker Bios:
Milo Ira: Milo Ira (Métis, Two-Spirit, Autistic) is a doctoral student in social epidemiology at Simon Fraser University. Their research examines healthcare access for neurodivergent and gender-diverse Indigenous people, integrating decolonial methodologies and community-driven approaches. Their work is deeply informed by their previous career as an illustrator, where they cultivated visual storytelling as a means of knowledge translation. Through their scholarship, they challenge colonial frameworks of health, centering Indigenous relationality, kinship, and resurgence.
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Patty Douglas: Patty Douglas is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Community Engagement and Social Change at Queen’s University, Canada. Her research focuses on re-storying deficit paradigms to neurodivergence in education and health using critical approaches including critical neurodiversity and disability studies and arts-based, decolonizing and multimedia storytelling methodologies. As a white settler academic, Douglas is deeply committed to decolonizing research. She identifies as neurodivergent and invisibly disabled and is a former inclusive education lead. Her monograph, Unmothering Autism: Ethical Disruptions and Affirming Care is available from UBC Press.
Haley Clark: Haley Clark (she/her) is a PhD student in the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University. Her research focuses on lived experiences of systemic ableism and disability identity in education, particularly as this relates to neurodivergence. Haley’s background in the sociology of education and critical disability studies spurs her active involvement in inclusive education. Haley has presented at numerous regional and international conferences on ableism, language use, and disability identity. She is a published author in the area of mentorship and disability education.
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Lisa Fernandes: Lisa Fernandes is a neurodivergent doctoral student in the Educational Leadership and Policy program at OISE/UT. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lisa has deep expertise and useful skillsets in a wide range of seemingly unconnected disciplines outside of teaching, which you are encouraged to ask her about! Lisa is passionate about social justice and children’s safety and education, advocating for the repeal of Section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada as called for by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with research interests positioned to dismantle deficit discourses and barriers faced by neurodivergent individuals in schools, at work and within communities.
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Sree Lekshmi Mini Suresh: Sree Lekshmi M S is a third-year doctoral candidate in English at the Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, under the supervision of Dr Aratrika Das. Her research examines the intersection of mental health memoirs with the vocabularies of pain and care in India, drawing from literature, psychiatry, history, and sociology. Her doctoral thesis, "Story-ing Bipolar Disorder in Indian Memoirs: Care, Metaphors, and Illness Narratives," explores the lived experiences of individuals with Bipolar Affective Disorder (BPAD) in India through personal narratives. She has presented papers at the ICSSR-Sponsored National Conference and the 2024 Health Humanities Consortium Conference. She attended the Medical Humanities International Summer School in Vadstena, Sweden, supported by the Wellcome-funded Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities at Durham University. Her publications in Literature Compass, Economic and Political Weekly, and The Polyphony contribute to critical discussions on mental health narratives within the medical humanities.
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