Integrated in a Segregated Society: FASD and Disability in the Kimberley, Western Australia

Abstract

This thesis explores the concepts of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and how local people react towards impaired/disabled people and their families in Grey Town, Kimberley, Western Australia. Later my discussion shifts to how the Grey Town Aboriginal society maintains integrations between able-bodied and impaired/disabled people after the impact of public education and how these integrations are preserved by various intertwined social factors such as remoteness, housing shortage, education problems and poverty. The town is very small, with a population of about 1,000. However it is segregated by many factors such as socioeconomic status, race, language groups, and birthplace. There are different areas of Grey Town related to the social hierarchy of the town, in other words, knowing where a person lives indicates his or her racial background, job and financial status. My fieldwork data revealed that the local community health department of the Grey Town District Hospital consults 95% of all pregnancies. Since public health education is widely available in the town, the local Aboriginal peoples’ concept of disability is affected by a western medical model. However, they have their own unique expression to indicate FASD. Local Aboriginal people associate ‘disabilities’ with severe mobility limitations, therefore intellectual or mental impairments are rarely referred to as disabilities. In general, they did not consider impairment as a problem, but they consider a child who cannot do what other children do due to physical limitations, as disabled. Notwithstanding the complex segregated social structure and the local Aboriginal people’s negative perception towards disability, impaired/disabled community members found widespread support and seemed fully integrated into the local society.