What I learned about linguistic anthropology, Indigenous decolonization projects and Queer safe space from Deaf culture

"My interest in Deaf Culture began a couple of years before the class. Douglas College, where I have a regular faculty appointment in the Department of Anthropology is also home to the largest and oldest Sign Language Interpreter training program in BC. As a result it is not uncommon to see people discussing in sign in the hallways, or to have sign language interpretation at college events, or even live interpretation as you teach (though transcription is more common). A happenstance reading of Andrew Solomon’s book "Far From the Tree" which addresses the gap between deaf children and their hearing parents spurred on my interest in Deaf Cultures and signed language peoples. I started to incorporate material on signed languages and Deaf Culture into my Intro Anthropology classes about three years ago. I positioned this material in our units on linguistic anthropology attempting holism with nods to biological, historical, and cultural influences on the composition of Deaf Cultures. Students were introduced to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis —which, so far as I have read, is uncontested in Deaf Studies literature—and are asked to step outside the predominant audistic deafness-as-disability paradigm." -- Author.