![]() ![]() The conference began with an orientation session in the main lodge led by ANI founder Jim Sinclair, who explained the guidelines that had been established to maintain and preserve the environment as autistic space. The program included presentations on “self-advocacy” (a term borrowed from the disability rights movement), educating law-enforcement personnel, and the history of deaf culture, which offered instructive parallels for the culture being born at Autreat. The group was as diverse as the autism spectrum itself, including nonspeaking adults who used letter boards to communicate, an urban planner who worked at the Los Angeles International Airport, and the late photographer Dan Asher, who chronicled the early days of punk and reggae in New York City while hanging out with novelist William Burroughs in his bunker on the Lower East Side. The theme of the conference was “Celebrating Autistic Culture,” and nearly 60 people came. ![]() Quiet and remote, the camp offered community members of Autism Network International, an advocacy group organized for and by autistics, an opportunity to create an environment that was relatively free of the sensory assaults that were unavoidable in most urban conference centers. The first “Autreat” was held at Camp Bristol Hills in Canandaigua, New York, in late July 1996. Excerpted from NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman. ![]()
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