It’s November and Indigenous Disability Awareness Month (IDAM) raises awareness about and celebrates the significance social economic and cultural contributions that Indigenous people experiencing disability bring to our communities. It’s also an opportunity to mobilise to address the complex ongoing intersectional challenges Indigenous people face in their everyday lives.

According to IDAM: Over 30 percent of Indigenous Canadians age 15 and over experience disability compared with 22 percent of all Canadians aged 15 and over.

Created in 2015 by "Indigenous Disability Canada, British Columbia Aboriginal Network On Disability Society," proclaimed by government of British Columbia 2017 - United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities recommended Canada officially proclaim and recognise IDAM nationally every November.

For the first boots on the ground Mixed Bag show of the season, this week on Outlook we’re marking IDAM, Disabled Veterans Day, and Remembrance Day. Then sister/co-host Kerry shares about a disability focus group held by Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly, the “Say It Plain) course put on by her writer/activist friend Kerra, and howling like a wolf in community with a group of women creatives facilitated by other friend and previous Outlook guest Jen.

Speaking of British Columbia, we’re talking fear and risk as Kerry is traveling solo there, to the Blind Beginnings offices in Vancouver, for a training weekend, facilitated by a federal grant to put on what are known as Blindness 101 workshops in Ontario during 2026 (more to come on this early next year).

Question: About how many needles have you had in your lifetime? Have you ever tried to count?

We both wish we would have counted.

We’re discussing an event this month we’re attending, with our parents, as the four of us who’ve donated and received kidneys are excited to be taking part in a celebration of 50 years since one of the earliest living donor transplants from one sister to another at London Health Sciences Centre back on November 19th, 1975.

Finally, Santa, if you’re listening, Kerry could use a new white cane for Christmas.

Happy 70th birthday Dad and check out Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly mentioned in this episode:

https://stingingfly.org

Listen to an episode from the Outlook archives with Neil Belanger, CEO of The British Columbia Aboriginal Network on Disability Society:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2021-12-06-neil-belanger-from-british-columbia/id1527876739?i=1000544243467