Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business reveals the stories of 30 people with a disability from Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Through their involvement in the project each participant draws much-needed attention to critical issues that impact on their lives. Each participant’s story is complex and intertwined with Australia’s political and social history, which has resulted in today’s unacceptably high rates of disability in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

By any measure, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities are amongst some of the most disadvantaged Australians. They often face multiple barriers to meaningful participation within their own communities and the wider community. Addressing the unmet needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities is one of the most critical social justice issues in Australia today. Unfinished Business powerfully exposes the injustices experienced by many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities. It also, importantly, shows us the power and dignity inherent in the participants. Each photograph also reminds us of the diversity of disability in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The First Peoples Disability Network, the national organisation representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities and their families, is deeply proud of our association with this historic and groundbreaking exhibition. For too long the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities have been largely overlooked. This is despite the fact that the prevalence of disability is significantly higher amongst Aboriginal and Torres Islanders than in the general Australian population. Until recently the prevalence of disability in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities has been only anecdotally reported. However, the 2011 Australian Census concluded that at least 50 per cent of Aboriginal people have some form of disability or long-term health condition. This may actually be a conservative figure, because it does not include a measure of the prevalence of psychosocial disability in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The high prevalence of disability, approximately twice that of the non-Indigenous population, occurs in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities for a range of social reasons, including poor health care, poor nutrition, and psychological trauma: for example, removal from family and community, as well as the breakdown of traditional community structures in some areas. Aboriginal people with disabilities are significantly over-represented on a population group basis, among homeless people, in the criminal and juvenile justice systems and in the care and protection system, both as parents and as children. Currently most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities remain at the periphery of the disability service system. This continues to occur for a range of reasons, some of which are well established. However, one factor that remains little understood is the reluctance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities to identify as people with a disability. This too continues to occur for a range of reasons, including the fact that in traditional language there isn’t a comparable word for disability. This would suggest that disability was an accepted part of the human experience: that is, that people are not labelled.

Many parents are reluctant to identify their children as having a disability because they worry that they may be viewed as bad parents and as a consequence may have their children removed. It is still the case that Aboriginal children are significantly overrepresented in the out-of-home care system. Furthermore, some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities are reluctant to self-identify because they already experience discrimination based upon their Aboriginality and they do not want to be given another label perceived as negative. This preference to not identify presents a fundamental barrier to the equal participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities in Australian society. The First Peoples Disability Network argues passionately that for positive change to happen in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities, that change must be driven by the community itself. It cannot be imposed, implied, intervened or developed, even if with well-meaning intentions, by an external service system that the vast majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities have little or no experience of in the first place. In many communities across the country Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders with disabilities have been supported and accepted as members of their communities. However, it is the resources to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders with disabilities that many communities lack. Furthermore, the service system tends to operate from a ‘doing for’ as opposed to ‘doing with’ approach, which further disenfranchises communities because they simply do not feel that they can self-direct their future. It must be remembered that in many ways the social movement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities is starting from an absolute baseline position. Unfinished Business acts as a powerful conduit for the consolidation of the emerging social movement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities. All the participants in the exhibition are leaders in their own right. Unfinished Business provides a critical platform for the participants’ stories. We are very proud to be associated with Unfinished Business. We are very grateful to photographer Belinda Mason and thank her not only for the quality of her work but also for the respectful and dignified way in which she has portrayed each of the participants.

DAMIAN GRIFFIS
Chief Executive Officer
First Peoples Disability Network