This chapter delves deeply into the core links among healing, land, and spirituality and considers their role as the primary factors in decolonizing disability in Latin America. It is developed on the basis of Indigenous knowledge systems from Abya Yala, it not only puts forward Western biomedical and neoliberal frameworks but also goes ahead and rejects them. It, however, points at a relational interpretation of disability as one brought about historically and politically through colonial violence, land dispossession, environmental injustice, and epistemic erasure. Indigenous healing methods such as curanderismo, shamanic plant medicine, Afro-descendant spiritual traditions, and community-based rituals are studied not just as cultural choices to Western medicine but as holistic systems of care that embrace the whole body, mind, spirit, community, and territory. These methods help to restore equilibrium by dealing with issues of spiritual disharmony, collective trauma, and broken ties with land and ancestors. The chapter also positions disability within a larger context of inequality and pointedly deals with issues such as forced migration, politically and economically motivated land grabbing, climate change, and pollution that the Indigenous and Afro-descendant people are exposed to and which contribute to health disparities among them. Community-centered healing models and disability justice movements are portrayed as resistance grounds that highlight collective care, cultural continuity, and participatory knowledge production. By emphasizing Indigenous practices, the chapter insists that the concept of epistemic justice is applied and health, disability, and care frameworks are fundamentally reoriented. It comes to the point that decolonizing disability means not only stopping with the incorporation of the marginalized within the colonial systems but also moving on to the non-violent Indigenization that recognizes land, spirituality, and relationality as the core of healing, justice, and collective liberation.

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Healing, Land, and Spirituality: Decolonizing Disability Through Traditional Practices

  • Sheena Mariam Thomas,
  • Ramakrishnan Veerabathiran

摘要

This chapter delves deeply into the core links among healing, land, and spirituality and considers their role as the primary factors in decolonizing disability in Latin America. It is developed on the basis of Indigenous knowledge systems from Abya Yala, it not only puts forward Western biomedical and neoliberal frameworks but also goes ahead and rejects them. It, however, points at a relational interpretation of disability as one brought about historically and politically through colonial violence, land dispossession, environmental injustice, and epistemic erasure. Indigenous healing methods such as curanderismo, shamanic plant medicine, Afro-descendant spiritual traditions, and community-based rituals are studied not just as cultural choices to Western medicine but as holistic systems of care that embrace the whole body, mind, spirit, community, and territory. These methods help to restore equilibrium by dealing with issues of spiritual disharmony, collective trauma, and broken ties with land and ancestors. The chapter also positions disability within a larger context of inequality and pointedly deals with issues such as forced migration, politically and economically motivated land grabbing, climate change, and pollution that the Indigenous and Afro-descendant people are exposed to and which contribute to health disparities among them. Community-centered healing models and disability justice movements are portrayed as resistance grounds that highlight collective care, cultural continuity, and participatory knowledge production. By emphasizing Indigenous practices, the chapter insists that the concept of epistemic justice is applied and health, disability, and care frameworks are fundamentally reoriented. It comes to the point that decolonizing disability means not only stopping with the incorporation of the marginalized within the colonial systems but also moving on to the non-violent Indigenization that recognizes land, spirituality, and relationality as the core of healing, justice, and collective liberation.