Deaf Art Community - I'M POSSIBLE

Video profile Deaf Art Community Jogja (group hip hop bisu tuli) from Jogjakarta, Indonesia.



“In nature there’s no blemish but the mind, none can be called deformed but unkind” (William Shakespeare in Twelfth Night Act III Scene IV)



Never has God created imperfect people, or what-is-so-called ‘disabled’. People who call them as disabled are the most cruel people. God created people with the highest perfection and having the same right to develop their potentials to gain wealth.



Until these days, the lives of disabled people and deaf people in
Indonesia are still marginalized both structurally and culturally. There
is injustice to get their rights for education, jobs, health, social,
culture, law, access for information, and public facilities use. In
other word, there is discrimination toward disabled people in the
society. Attitudes towards disability are quite bad in Indonesia, and
there is a lingering association of impairment with wrong-doing.




Most people are embarrassed about disability, and deaf children are
sometimes hidden away, especially in rural areas. Some of the deaf
people in the organisations we work with say their parents let them come
to meetings in the hope that they will ‘become normal’ by forbidding
them from using sign language. Faced with negative attitudes like this,
deaf children often grow up to have low self-esteem and little
self-confidence.





Too many people are busy with their
own importance; trying to get more money, chasing better carriers, and
thinking to get higher positions, or even cheating for their own sakes
as they have forgotten their surroundings that need their hands.





Through
this paper, I would like to invite people to step into the proud of,
emergent DEAF-WORLD and learn about its language, values, history, and
concerns and to see a ‘real world’ surround us, but might have not been
seen or heard by our very own eyes & ears to ‘open’ other
people’s eyes to see a deaf community that is considered as a
minor-marginal-community in Indonesia as disabled people, while not many
people realize that deaf community is not disabled people but they see
themselves as ‘language minority group’ who are fighting to get their
right of sign language as their first mother tongue language.





Through
our presentation, we will guide all of you to have a wonderful journey
tour into the deaf world in Indonesia, their deaf culture, sign
language, deaf education and their life. We will have it through our
interactive workshop, to give you an opportunity to experience a little
of what the works is like for a Deaf person.





In
everyday like, Deaf people try to overcome barriers to communication in
an environment that is designed to meet needs of hearing people. We hope
that this workshop will provide a valuable insight into the life of
Deaf people.





By attending the workshop, you will gain a
better understanding of how to communicate with deaf people
(communication strategies), how to be deaf like is, some basic
Indonesian sign, how deaf enjoy the music and culture art in theatre.





Indonesia News video clip: Deaf Art Community Jogja




Video source suryojati