Abstract
Deaf empowerment is a newly popular concept that is discussed, but often in vague and ill-defined ways. This article examines the literature to establish what empowerment is and, more importantly, the processes by which empowerment occurs. This is used as a framework to take a retrospective look at past events and activities among Deaf/Sign Language Peoples and examine how these fit into the models of empowerment and decolonization outlined in the first section. Some issues specific to Deaf/SLP that hinder the processes of empowerment are also raised.