The Huronia Survivors Speakers Bureau: enacting a cripped feminist solidarity with intellectually disabled institutional survivors

This paper explores how intellectually disabled institutional survivors were able to enter into public space only after its neoliberal underpinnings were challenged through cripped feminist solidarity efforts. The authors of this paper engage in affective ethnography to consider the organizational practices of the Huronia Survivors Speakers Bureau, an informal group featuring intellectually disabled activists who survived institutionalization. The authors and speakers found that the Bureau countered the enduring dehumanizing effects of institutional violence to the extent that solidarity practices made possible more authentic materializations of agency. In this paper, the authors consider the impact of institutional violence. Then, with a focus on negotiating travel arrangements and moderating presentations, they show how they enacted cripped feminist solidarity in order to redress survivors’ lasting experiences of devaluation in neoliberal contexts.