A female presenting person ~ moira ~ sits in an electric vibration of scribbled neon green lines and fuzzy medium green dots and splotches. Behind their head, at the top of the image, and at a slight upward angle, are bold black letters saying: Sososo up for hanging! moira is a disabled Indigenous person with shiny light colored skin. Their head is slightly tilted to the right. They are sitting in a 3-quarter pose from the shoulders up. moira’s long, dark hair has purple-ish red streaks at the bottom. It falls forward over their shoulders and is tucked behind one ear. Their bangs are fluffed up and away from their forehead. They have a long face with high rounded cheeks. Their long nose slightly flares out. moira has black eyebrows rounding over their somewhat hooded almond shaped dark blue eyes. Their eyes are accented with laugh crinkles and black eyeliner. moira is giving us a soft toothy grin. They are wearing a bright red crew neck t-shirt. It’s short sleeved with bright blue stripes at the shoulder. The top edge of a matching bright blue long glove can be seen on moira’s arm closest to us. moira is sitting in front of the green number 1 virtual participation card.
About a 7 minute read. Words like crip and “access intimacy” are explained below my bio.
Hi hi every body! My name is moira. I’m an excitable disabled Indigenous person with a constellation of disabilities! Here’s my 3rd person bio:
moira williams (they/them), is a disabled Indigenous artist, cross-disability cultural activist and access doula; co-creating and weaving disability justice together with crip celebratory resistance and environmental justice. moira believes in access as art and “access intimacy” as an attitude needed to push beyond the limitations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Their often co-creative work leads with disability, stemming from the understanding that deep-rooted cultural changes must be made in arts and environmental spaces and practices to become accessible. One part of affecting change is by placing disabled artists and activists in positions of influence to shape culture from within. Another part is acknowledging that entering positions of power is not the end goal. Instead, the end goal is to co-create an active culture where power positions no longer exist.
They are currently an Access Doula and Cross Disability Culture activist at Culture Push, NYC. moira’s on-going work with water focuses on access intimacy and water intimacy as ways forward to accessible waterfronts. In 2021, as part of Works On Water’s Tending the Edge, moira engaged NYC’s disability communities along with NYC’s Department of City Planning and the Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. As part of this, moira created an online and in-person Disability Cabaret on an accessible boat and a new practice of extended comment deadlines to support comments from NYC’s disability communities. We celebrated the new practice, an accessible bathroom, and ourselves on an accessible boat!
moira received a Santa Fe Arts Institute REVOLUTION, Blue Mountain Center Harriet Barlow Residency, Disability + DANCE NYC Social Justice Fellowships, a U.S. Artists Disability Futures Fund and Laundromat Project Abundance grants. Their co-creative work has been at Tangled Art + Disability, Canada, CUE Art Foundation, Common Field, i-Park Biennial, Landscape Research, UK, ARoS Museum, Denmark, Works on Water Triennial, and MoMA PS1. moira co-curated TALK BACK at Flux Factory with Lexy Ho-Tai; the first NYC exhibition and 3 day convening centering intersectional, intergenerational, cross-disability artists and activists cited in The New York Times. The New York Times link is HERE.
They were thrilled to be an Aqueous Eco-Monster with Petra Kuppers at University of Michigan. moira continues to be variations of an Aqueous Eco-Monster! They are equally thrilled to be part of Carmen Papalia’s Pain Pals Series. moira’s scores and writing have been in Jacket2, Emergency INDEX and A Field Guide to iLANDING.
moira currently lives on their ancestral Lenni Lenape, Secatouge, lands. These are my ancestors’ stolen lands that move with us along what is colonially known as The Great South Bay, Long Island, New York. Here we continue to speak our languages, live, love, and celebrate life along the tidal waterways, woodlands, and cities around the world. In these ways and many more, we flourish and enrich the physical and the virtual worlds, and always will.
Wikipedia’s Cultural Disability page has thoughts on Disability Culture by Carol Gill Ph.D., Jim Ferris, and Petera Kuppers. I connect to each of their thoughts but feel best aligned with Petra Kuppers’ thoughts on Disability Culture. The link is HERE.
I acknowledge that the word inclusivity/inclusion and words like it have been repeatedly rehearsed and performed throughout the world but not fully digested. I believe in part, that a lack of empathy and lived experience prevents digestion, understanding and caring. Causing our experiences to be reduced to policies centering ideas of ‘normality’ based on cis and white-centric beliefs that are not flexible and consistently made without disabled communities, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous People of Color) communities and LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, asexual, 2 Spirit, pansexual) communities.
cross-disability - a 1970’s term centering inclusivity - we all work together in solidarity regardless of what our individual disabilities may be. Cross-disability also refers to disabled people who have more than one disability.
crip - short for cripple. A term often and intentionally used in Disability Justice to reclaim the word cripple. Please only use crip if given permission to do so. Crip is not a term all disabled people embrace.
celebratory crip resistance - Joy is a propulsive force. Regimes of power understand that anything that sparks and vibrates energy threatens the rigid control of a population. Music, dance, art, eroticism, all creative expression, sparks and creates momentum. Joy is a form of resistance because it’s an energy, an “energy for change,” Audre Lorde declares. It counters and contrasts with the rigidity and control of oppressive structures in a non-violent way. Audre Lorde intentionally calls for joy as resistance in her 1978 essay, The Uses of the Erotic, “In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.” - moira williams
“access intimacy”- coined by disability scholar and activist Mia Mingus, is “that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs.