Babe wake up, new D*List Delivered just dropped
Plus: WIN free stickers, and what on earth is this DSS consultation?
Mauri ora! Nau mai ki The D*List Delivered ✨
If you’re new here, I’ll be here every Friday with the latest on disability-culture and news, fresh stories from our website, and the need-to-know on local events and kaupapa.
In this delicious edition:
Win free D*List stickers
An access guide for Auckland Pride, when disability meets academic institutions, and a love letter to smell
Be part of the Disability Support Services consultation
But first, let’s welcome our new fabulous D*List kaimahi Von Ridgley (community hub coordinator) and Joegen Daniels (editorial producer), and Naomi Vailima who's joining us for the next three months as part of our aspiring storyteller programme. We’ve loved having them around so far and hope you get to meet them at our upcoming events. Watch this space! 👀
Summer has been all go at The D*List as we reflect your feedback from last year back into our plans and dreams for this year. Some of us were lucky to spend Waitangi week up North at Terenga Parāoa marae in Whangārei for a whānau hauā-led noho marae, before we headed up to Waitangi. I personally felt inspired by seeing the way that marae kawa adapted to its people and context. It was the first time I’d seen whaikōrero delivered in sign language and tikanga offered to non-binary folks in advance. Here’s us looking excited and sweaty shortly after a lesson on Māori ringatohu reo (Māori sign language) taught by Eddie Hokianga at Waitangi:
We loved seeing some familiar faces and meeting new ones. If going to Waitangi wasn’t something you considered, maybe our access guide may inspire your 2026 trip.
Now, it’s time for our VALENTINES GIVEAWAY 💕 We wish you all big, soft, abundant love whether romantic, platonic, familial or otherwise. To spread the love we’re giving away 10 packs of our brand new D*List stickers to our newsletter readers 💌
To be in the draw, reply to this newsletter on email or comment on Substack with any of the following:
💘 Your dream date
🙃 Dating fails
❤️🔥 Spicy access-tips
We’ll announce the winners in next week’s newsletter and we might share some of the juicy stories. And ICYMI, we’ve got love and relationships related stories from the archive including disclosing your disability on dating apps, learning from neurodivergent relationships, the joy of disabled mutual care, and adaptive pleasure and pelvic health 💖
🚔 Research conducted by the Donald Beasley Institute, initiated by the police, found that disabled people are more likely to be stopped by police, have force used against them, and end up being charged even when they have done nothing wrong. In an interview with RNZ, Dr Robbie Francis Watene shared a reflection:
“What was quite amazing in our findings was that on so many points, police and disabled people who had engaged with police agreed. They agreed that things were not working, they agreed that things could be done better and that disability-responsive policing should be a key focus in the future….if we are getting it right for our disability population and the community and the disabled people who are working in police themselves, then we get it right for everyone.”
🦄 Thinking of attending Auckland Pride Festival? We’ve put together an access guide which includes information about Big Gay Out, various arts and craft workshops, and exhibitions.
🎓 Star Hitch shares the way she leans into crip time for her studies in critical disability studies while in an institution that isn’t built for disabled people.
I have come to learn that it is the prioritising of our own needs in these environments - of watching lecture recordings from bed and utilising assignment extensions - that creates disabled success. Our bodies and their dreams should no longer be crushed for the academic machine.
Disabled success will not come from us bowing down to what they want us to look like, act like and talk like. It is only through contesting these rules that attempt to warp us into ‘normal’ students by creating our own accessible study that we can begin to contest the roots that allow for such mistreatment and exclusion to take place.
🌹 Semi Cho writes a love letter to the underrated sense: smell. She takes us from her eleventh floor light-flooded office which often strains her vision, to the country meadows, or to a tropical island just through a sensory refresh spent at a nearby Mecca or department store.
It’s through scents that the outdoors are brought indoors. The country meadow is now at nose length and without the hayfever symptoms. Lilies distilled in a bottle means no need to navigate a valley. The notes of a coconut saves us a trip to a tropical beach. Thorns make it pretty tricky to hold a rose and it’s definitely easier to hold a small glass bottle. The alluring scent of tobacco makes me content, rather than picking up a bad habit…Every perfumer who’s created a scent had a vision to capture a moment or memory with the intention to transport us away from the everyday or, in this case - a glarey office.
💭 The Disability Support Services (DSS) consultation period started this Monday and is open until the 24th of March. It’s a chance to you to put in your whakaaro on the assessment process and flexible funding rules. We had a conversation with one of its leaders, Chris Bunny, to better understand what this was about. He added that while “there’s a lot of things not to like about the system”, the consultation is “a great platform for change”.
There are several ways to engage:
- Register for a 2.5-hour in-person workshop in your area
- Register for a 2-hour online workshop
- Make a written, audio or video submission
- Fill out a survey (this is the quickest way)
Speaking of feedback, thank you to all who completed our community survey last year. We’ve drawn and contacted the lucky winner of a $25 Kylee & Co voucher 🎁
That’s us for the first edition of The D*List Delivered 2025! Hei ā tērā wiki! 🫡
On behalf of The D*List,
Eda
