The history and hijacking of disability day - and what we're doing to claim it back

Celebrating the United Nations’ International Day of People with Disabilities on December 3 is something we can be proud of. I’m reminded of disability creativity. I recall a mental distress activist gleefully singing his own composition I’m Just A Little Mad to his guitar accompaniment, a disabled dancer performed with aerial grace, delighting her friends. A local writer reading their disability-celebratory poetry, a learning-disabled theatre group performing their own work with gusto, and everyone joining in singing with a great rock and blues band. All of it part of disabled people claiming and celebrating our space with community and fun - at least until Covid threw a spanner in the works.

In earlier years, Wellington celebrations were based at Te Papa, featuring panel discussions, dance, theatre, readings and music. One year we found ourselves having to justify our actual existence to a panel member gone rogue. Another year, we all got sunburned during an unsatisfactory council community consultation. On another day, we workshopped and then performed an energetic human rights-themed street theatre, with a theme based on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, presenting a bemused attorney general with a human rights focused proclamation, an appropriate precursor to Human Rights Day on December 10.

Celebrations have sometimes been associated with Disability Pride. Disability Pride was first celebrated in Aotearoa in 1989, with a Disability Pride Festival organised by public service disabled equal employment opportunities practitioners. We found celebration and change making aren’t mutually exclusive.

Our international day has come a long way since it was first observed in 1992. While the day has often had an arts and cultural focus in the past, in 2021 the New Zealand Government announced the formation of the disability Ministry, now Whaikaha. Organisations have held awareness workshops and training, morning teas for disabled staff, or panels with disabled guest speakers. Some of these activities are not 'by' us, or even 'for' us, and some 'diversity' events may be the only nod to disability all year. Most of the low-key events we organise don’t get media coverage.

This year the theme is: “United in action to rescue and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals for, with, and by persons with disabilities”. While it’s not catchy, it can be unpicked creatively and transformed into something meaningful in our national and cultural context.

Our day is part of the UN system of designated days, weeks, years and decades to mark the rights of particular population groups or development issues. A mind-boggling 145 international days are observed by the UN each year. If we add in all the condition- and impairment-specific 'awareness' days and weeks, we might be forgiven for feeling rather ho-hum about the lot. There has been 'awareness-raising' for more years than I care to remember and I wonder when there will be enough of it to generate real action. The UN promotes awareness, but also action.

There are also UN Years, also with equally wide ranging subjects, from the Year of the Potato in 2008, to the International Year of Glass in 2022. We had 'our' Year of the Disabled in 1981, and although participation meant we had to struggle with excruciating ableism, the five million dollars the Telethon raised led to the development of Total Mobility and the teletext service, as well as the establishment of DPA, along with many community improvements.

The official name of the day has morphed over time. from The International Day of Disabled Persons, to become The International Day of Persons with Disabilities, counterintuitive to the fierce claiming of disability identity over the last two decades. This has led to claims that non-disabled people have hijacked the day from the change-enabling social model of disability. The social model says that a person is disabled by society rather than by their body or abilities. Who we are is OK. What happens to us isn’t. This model looks at what is wrong with, and needs fixing in society, rather than in the disabled person. Even though it isn’t the panacea for all disability problems, it gives us strength and power.

The language change of the name of our day is certainly indicative of the never-ending task of challenging the entrenched values and attitudes of the past, indicated by the slow advance of disability rights evident in the latest Convention on the Rights of Disabled People (CRPD) progress report. We ratified the CRPD fifteen years ago.

There is also a good deal of unease about the new government’s disability policies, not helped by an upward trend in Covid numbers.  But we can use every tool we have, including harnessing the wonderful and wild disability creativity, to assert our rights on our day or any other time. Together we can achieve much more than a group who all have the same impairment.

This year is following the tradition around the country. A circus workshop, performances, sports and a sensory experience, sausage sizzles, picnics, a seminar on AI and accessibility,  an open day and social gatherings are among the events being organised to celebrate this year. 

Making change and creating enjoyment go together. But we can also use the day to intentionally build a strong, inclusive, rich and joyful pan-impairment community, and enjoy some safe outdoors summer fun together, claiming our day. Whatever you do please don’t wish me an anodyne Happy International Day.