Sites of conscience redressing disability institutional violence

Abstract

Australian victim-survivors of disability institutional violence have been unable to obtain public recognition and justice through conventional court-based processes and legal remedies. Redressing or ‘setting right’ the ongoing and structural phenomenon of disability institutional violence requires a new approach. This article introduces one dimension that might form part of such an approach: re-engaging through sites of conscience practices with former disability institutions. Sites of conscience practices engage the broader community in memories and histories of places of injustice in order to prompt collective action to prevent further injustice through broader social and legal change. The article proposes that through sites of conscience practices former disability institutions in Australia can be part of how we collectively recognise and ‘set right’ disability institutional violence. The article begins by explaining the approach to ‘disability institutions', ‘disability institutional violence’ and ‘redress'. Next, the article uses the example of Peat and Milson Island Hospital (New South Wales, Australia) to discuss how former disability institutions – through demolition/dereliction, repurposing or redevelopment – might sustain disability institutional violence. The article then introduces the concept of ‘sites of conscience’ and presents examples of sites of conscience practices in relation to former disability institutions across United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Denmark. Reflecting on these examples, the article makes preliminary suggestions of how we might re-position engagement with the memories, places and materiality of former disability institutions as integral to redressing disability institutional violence in Australia.

Listening to People with Intellectual Disability about Institutions

“…Second, there has been little visibility of the histories and lived experiences of historic institutions. There have been limited official efforts to specifically reckon with, redress, and repair the injustices of historic institutions, the very existence of institutions, the coercive placement of people in historic institutions, and the myriad of harms experienced within them (Stace, 2022;Steele, 2022). This absence of official response contrasts with government apologies and redress schemes in other contexts such as Indigenous children who were removed from their families and communities pursuant to official government laws, policies and practices (e.g.…”

“…However, it is still too early to tell whether these will result in recognition, individual redress, and social repair for the full scope of harms of historic institutions. There is growing recognition and practices of engaging the community in learning about and remembering historic institutions emerging in several countries including sites of conscience (place-based memory projects) of specific sites of historic institutions in America and England (Steele, 2022) and community education programmes (Community Living Ontario, 2022). Without proper acknowledgement in these various ways, historic institutions remain what Maria Tumarkin (2022) terms in the context of gendered violence, an "open wound" yet to be healed.…”

“…Without accessible or inclusive planning processes or materials, people with intellectual disability were unlikely to be aware of, and thus unable to participate in, these consultation processes and activities (Steele and Carnemolla, 2021). Similarly, a government-run sport and recreation camp for school children on Milson Island (close to Peat Island), the site of a state-run historic institution for 37 years does not deliver any education at the camp to acknowledge the island's institutional history (Steele, 2022). Lack of public knowledge about historic institutions compounds dehumanisation of the people and sends the message that their lives still do not matter.…”

“…Scholarship documents the experiences of former residents of Huronia Regional Center in Ontario (Canada) in acts of reconnection, remembrance, and resistance in response to their experiences of historic institutions (Rossiter and Rinaldi, 2019). Others analyse possibilities of place-based memory projects about historic institutions such as sites of conscience (Punzi, 2022;Steele, 2022). Burch documents practices of remembrance and oral history by Indigenous families and communities with a connection to the former Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in South Dakota (US) (Burch, 2021).…”