Protactile is a new language used by the deaf blind. I’ve known blind people and I’ve known deaf people, but I’ve never met someone who is deaf and blind. And as we know from the history of Helen Keller, they not only exist, they are able to communicate. How they do that has been an evolution and will no doubt continue. In Helen Keller’s day people could communicate by spelling words in the other’s hands. Then sign language and Braille were developed, and over time deaf blind people realized they were somehow not given the same consideration as others, they had to adapt to others’ way of communicating. For example signing involves the use of the space around the person, certain signs depend on it, not much use to a blind person. The deaf blind then had to depend on interpreters and that made them less independents. In 2005 a group of deaf blind women who were then at the Deaf Blind Service Center in Seattle began to seek another way, for them a better way. They use touch. They sit with knees touching and use touching to communicate. Different gestures have come to mean certain words, usually what the word means or evokes. The word oppression can be expressed by pushing down on the arm or thigh. A large car will be translated with something that means it is heavy such as a weight upon the arm or some other gesture conveying the importance of the car. A pat on the back is a sign that the person is here. As a more formal way of communicating Protactile was developed about 15 years ago by Jelica Nuccio a deaf blind person at the center in Seattle. She is now aided by one of her co-founder Aj Granda and was later joined by John Clark and together they founded the Deafblind Interpreting National Training and Resource Center through which they teach this new language which has attracted the attention of linguists who are beginning to think of it as a language all its own. Having had a sister who was a quadriplegic and could not move at all I am familiar with the handicaps humans can conquer and still thrive. Protactile is not only a reminder it stands as a testament to that conquering and thriving.
Category: Civil Rights
Anti-Abortion Activists in Spain
Spain as we know is a conservative Catholic country. Yet in 1985 it decriminalized abortion in the case of rape, an abnormal fetus or harm to the physical or psychological health of the mother. In 2014 the law was widened to be abortion on demand for the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. In practice the law worked mainly for doctors working in private clinics, those working in public hospitals often refused to perform the procedure. The legality of abortion didn’t of course stop anti-abortion activists, including right to life groups there. 89% of women seeking an abortion reported that they had felt harassed and 66% felt they had been threatened. Now Spain has criminalized harassment or intimidation of women seeking an abortion. It means that anti-abortion activists who try to convince women not to have abortions could face up to a year in jail. The law applies mainly to protests outside abortion clinics but also to the harassment or intimidation of the health care professionals who work there. The legislation was proposed by the prime minister who now plans to go further, making sure that public hospitals are able to practice abortion and also go still further, making it possible for 16- and 17-year-olds to have an abortion without parental consent, something that is possible in France and the UK.
Abortion is a divisive issue in the United States, and the example of deeply religious countries is instructive and encouraging. When abortion is legal in countries like Spain and Mexico, it suggests that somehow, down the road, however far down, the right and freedom to choose in the United States will have to prevail.
Animals With Legal Rights
In Ecuador individual wild animals now have legal rights. It’s the first country in the world to do so. And it follows because in 2008 Ecuador became the first country to recognize that nature or Pachamama, was an entity deserving rights. That law became part of the country’s constitution and yet it wasn’t clear whether wild animals were included. The new case has now settled that thanks to a woolly monkey named Estrellita. The monkey who had been illegally taken from the wild was kept as a pet by a librarian for 18 years. Owning wild animals is illegal in Ecuador and in 2019 Estrellita was taken from the librarian’s home and put in a zoo. A month later she died. The librarian did not know of the death and after Estrellita was seized sued to have the pet returned on the ground that her detention was illegal. What makes this story even more moving is that the court ruled in favor of the librarian, even if it was too late for Estrellita to be returned, but also ruled that the removal from her habitat in the first place had been a violation of her rights. In Ecuador this verdict raises the issue of animal rights to that of the highest law of the land, the level of constitution. In essence the court’s decision states that animals have rights protected by nature. This means that wild animals cannot be hunted, traded, fished, trafficked, captured, kept, collected, extracted, retained or exchanged. Following the example of Ecuador several countries now have granted legal protection to wild animals either through their courts or their constitution, countries like Columbia, Mexico, Chile, New Zealand, Panama. That is only a beginning, it doesn’t take a crystal ball to know other countries will join in.
Removing a Slur
The word squaw referring to a Native American woman is a slur. It is derogatory and offensive and like the N word, some even call it the S word. It is to Native Americans more than an insult to women, it is an insult to the land, and to the whole culture. There are in the US today something like 660 places with that word in them. And Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior and the first Native American Cabinet Secretary is looking for replacement names for rivers, lakes, resorts and other places. These places occur in all but ten states. And not all are on US government owned land. One of the most famous, Squaw Valley, the Northern California resort of Lake Tahoe which hosted the 1960 Olympics is in private hands. It rebranded itself as Palisades Tahoe a few months ago after a long debate over its identity. As far as California is concerned there are some 100 places with the slur in their names and a bill has been introduced in the state Assembly to rename them. Search engines have not yet caught up with the name changes. Type in Squaw in Google Maps or Apple Maps and the names of all places will come up, including Squaw Valley. Not all places are as known as this one, some are in more obscure places.
The National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers published a report this year that pointed out that renaming geographical places that bear a name that is a slur to Native American or African American women was not an effort to cancel history. It said, “Rather it is an opportunity to provide a more honest accounting of America’s past and a gesture towards healing historic wounds.”