This morning as I continue to listen Dark Emu audio book as I was eating breakfast, Bruce Pascoe continued to describe the technological building techniques the Indigenous people in Australia used before being colonised. Listening to Pascoe discuss the different types of buildings the Aboriginals erected all across the country for permanent housing, food storage and large gatherings. They also built complex dams and weirs for water management. Pascoe reports that many of the early explorers across Australia recorded in their diaries about large villages of Aboriginals and of their agricultural practices.

This furthered my amazement about how the Australian Colonial story is so enshrined in our nation's narrative of pre-colonial Australia. In school, in the 70s and 80s, it was taught that Aboriginals were nomads that were simple hunters and gatherers. In addition, at Regency Park Centre, a place for children with disabilities, there were some Aboriginal children who would, from time to time, stay in the villas at the centre for respite care and support. Adding to the colonial narrative, I remember being told that it was in Aboriginal culture that when they discovered that a baby or a person had a disability, they would leave them behind to die when moving to another camp site. A horrific thought!

So, with Pascoe highlighting the wrong in our narrative, I started to think, "Is my knowledge of disability in Aboriginal cultural incorrect too?" David, my support worker, who was assisting me with breakfast is quite involved with the Deaf community. He informed me that many of the Aboriginal languages also have sign language connected to them. He explained that when a baby is born Deaf it can take time for the family to tell. I can imagine that when the mother and baby connection kicks in, signing would form naturally, the same as verbal communication does.

So, taking this further, if our general understanding of pre-colonial Australian cultures is wrong, our understanding of how people with disabilities were treated in these cultures could be wrong too. Could it be that within Aboriginal cultures they were inclusive and assisted people to participate within their community groups? Pondering this, my mind was racing. What could we learn from these cultures? What did the early settlers overlook and destroy, like they did in so many ways, that could have helped us to learn about the lived experiences of indigenous people with disabilities? Then, my mind continued to race, as I am working on my keynote speaker paper for this year's ATARA National Conference, thinking about the kinds of assistive technologies they could have made. We know that they built sophisticated technical equipment such as weirs, fish catching mechanisms and permanent buildings, so if disabled people were a part of the culture, what sort of things, assistive technologies, might they have created and employed?