Episode 19: The Culture That Disables

Written By Andrea McCoy

What if disability was never the problem?

In this episode of Canadian Salad, Andrea and Hostion explore how disability is understood, misunderstood, hidden, punished, honoured, and reclaimed across cultures.

From African spiritual interpretations to East Asian notions of shame and harmony, from Latin American economic exclusion to Canada’s own disturbing history of forced sterilization, this conversation refuses the myth that the Western world has “figured it out.”

Instead, the episode invites listeners to pause and listen differently.

Through personal stories of invisible disability, intergenerational trauma, and lived experience, Andrea unpacks how colonial systems taught us to measure human worth through productivity, independence, and economic output. Disability, in these systems, becomes something to correct, hide, institutionalize, or control.

But there is another way.

Drawing on Indigenous frameworks and teachings, including the work of Dr. Rihanna Robinson (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nation), this episode introduces a radically different lens: disability as relational, holistic, and sacred. In many Indigenous worldviews, people with disabilities are not seen as deficient, but as teachers. Wellness is not measured by function, but by connection to land, kin, spirit, and community.

This episode challenges us to ask:

  • Who benefits from systems that reward only speed, productivity, and independence?

  • What wisdom are we missing when we treat bodies as problems instead of stories?

  • And what might change if interdependence, not independence, became our shared value?

This is a conversation about disability, yes. But it is also about power, care, belonging, and the quiet violence of “normal.” Listen in, reflect gently, and consider what kind of world we are building and who it truly makes room for.

Andrea McCoy https://www.janklin.ca
Next

Episode 18: When Pronouns Have A Passport