The other challenge is that creating a language takes a community, not a single individual like myself to be effective and accepted in the mainstream. I cannot assume to have even the slightest amount of ego to take this all on myself. I'd rather this be a community effort than my own individual effort. It will enable it to gain more acceptance into the language and community at large if comes from more folks than just me.
You are Speaker for the dead of the Deaf community... what does that mean and why is it so vitally important?
Well, this is still new to me, but makes sense. Because a lot of the way that people deal with death is to talk about it for a day or two, remember it yearly, and not talk about it in between anniversaries. Well, that is for families that don't have people with disabilities. Some families really take it hard when they have disabled children or relatives. Would some go to the point of refusing to acknowledge the existence of the individual as part of the family? Sure. Are there those that didn't care if the kid was sterilized during the eugenics movement in the US? Sure. (Many Deaf children were not told what was happening to them. They were told it was just a "routine doctor visit." Much of the atrocities carried out on the Native Americans have a near parallel to what was carried out upon the Deaf—sterilization (can you imagine the frustration and betrayal of Deaf adults sterilized as children trying to have children and not knowing why they can't, or if they did find out, the anger they must have felt?), scientific experimentation to "cure" them (read concoctions poured into ears, and radiation treatment, shock treatment, etc.), forced adoptions into hearing families (even away from the Deaf families they were born into), banned from intermarriage between Deaf (i.e. no marriage between Deaf couples—Communication breakdown must have gone to new levels of frustrations), and other social shunning. For the life outside of family, you see the institution [post 1880) with Sign language outlawed, and Deaf teachers (read role models and community leaders too) fired and not hired. The inevitable result of that means hearing teachers who are not required to know sign, and who customarily forced students to speak, making the kids sit on their hands or whacking them with rulers, even going so far as to occasionally break a finger or two to prod even the "most stubborn" into compliance.
It's sobering to realize that we are at best one generation away from crimes like this. The father of a good friend of mine was born deaf and underwent the radiation treatments you mention.
The pain, the anguish, and estrangement these individuals felt is still there, even in death, mostly ignored, and relegated to impersonal references, if at all, and seen as a grim past best skimmed over. The Deaf dead need a sign of recognition, of acknowledgement of the past, and of those whose lives were directly affected. Where are the names? You want to know why memorials like the Vietnam, WWII, Arizona Memorial, and Holocaust memorials ping our hearts with such raw emotion? Because we are acknowledging the dead. Giving a name means giving credence to a spirit, showing them their death was not in vain.
There is a lot that needs atoning for in regards to both the Deaf and the Native Americans and other minority cultures who have faced atrocities at the hands of a majority culture. It is long past the time that within the population I hold dear, the Deaf, we understand more deeply that need for the recognition and respect to be handed to those that suffered so that we may gain from their sacrifices and their wisdom. The lessons of the past do indeed haunt us. Back in the mid 1800's until the present day, the Medical community has been consistently striving to eradicate Deafness, and the "need" for Deaf Culture. I dare say the time to be complacent is certainly not now. The percentage of Deaf that are getting CI's (cochlear implants) is alarming. Longitudinal studies about rejections show that across the board, CI's are being chosen as first resort, not last in accommodations for Deaf children. I think even more problematic is the attendant delay and isolation away from the Deaf community for fear of screwing up their chances for becoming "functional" speaking Deaf that goes hand in hand with this push toward CIs. I think this is ludicrous and very shortsighted of the industry, greedy even. But that is another soapbox.
The Deaf dead are scared for the future of the Deaf. They have seen the betrayal of the medical world, with its "promises" of cures wrought upon the Deaf in pain, without regards for their person. When does the action of the institution bypass the right of the individual? When the affected individuals are children, who have no voice, whose rights to argue are many years beyond the point where the surgical knife scars them. Where is the freedom to be Deaf? I believe CI's are an individual choice, and do not fault those who have them, for many are forced in youth to have them implanted. I'll not shun them, nor mock them, but welcome them, for we are all Deaf. We are all seen by others as a single community, as Deaf/HoH (hard of hearing), regardless of our own personal identity. The society wields the ink and the knife and we've only our hands and our ear-piercing screams. How then do the Deaf dead feel? How do they indeed reach out to us if never taught sign? Mental telepathy? Touch? Screams in the night? Or emotions, pure unfiltered, unbiased, raw emotions? They find their ways to make their voices heard and it's about time we began to listen.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In