A Disability History of the United States

Content Warning: This section discusses ableism, racism, enslavement, and mental illness. The source text’s use of outdated and offensive terms is replicated only in quotations.

“Disability is not the story of someone else. It is our story, the story of someone we love, the story of who we are or may become, and it is undoubtedly the story of our nation. It is, quite simply, the American story in all of its complexities.”

In her Introduction, Nielsen explains that the history of disability in the United States is a far broader topic than it may seem. Even though a person may not be disabled or have a family member with a disability, the story of disability in America is still a quintessential part of history, and it has helped shape the nation.

“Generally, indigenous peoples understood the relationship between body, spirit, and mind very differently than the Europeans who later made their way through North America, the Africans forced in chains to the continent, the Asians who arrived to work the railroads in the nineteenth century, and contemporary peoples.”

In Chapter 1, Nielsen discusses what is known about how Indigenous peoples of North America viewed disability. She explains that while there was no comparable concept for disability, one was thought to be well if one’s mind, body, and spirit were in harmony. Likewise, their belief was that the spirit chooses the body it will occupy and that what was considered disability only occurred when one failed to participate in community reciprocity.

“The consequences of European colonization and conquest not only altered the ways in which indigenous peoples experienced what is now called disability, but it disproportionately killed people with disabilities and also produced disability.”

In this passage, Nielsen is referring to the fact that European colonization of Indigenous peoples in North America fundamentally altered their way of life. The weapons and conflict brought by the colonizers caused destruction, but the diseases they brought caused widespread epidemics that wiped out generations. All of these factors—weapons, conflict, and disease—not only killed and maimed Indigenous people but were even more devastating to those who were disabled.