Most people would agree that the criminal justice system needs to change in some way. The restorative justice (RJ) movement offers an approach to justice reform for both youth and adults that values repair and relationship over punishment and isolation when dealing with the aftermath of crime. Research is showing its positive effects, and support for this approach is growing.
Of course, the modern expression of restorative justice owes more than a debt of gratitude to indigenous justice worldview and practices. However, understanding and support for indigenous justice in North America is literally all over the map. Indigenous justice is all too often overlooked as an ongoing and sustaining influence for restorative justice and justice reform in general.
I’ll explore a few of my observations of the relationship between RJ and indigenous justice, and share a few examples of how indigenous justice is being revived and practiced in the United States and Canada. I’ll also have us consider the importance of ensuring indigenous voices are at the table for discussions on justice reform for youth and adults. For context, I will state that I am a settler of European descent living and working on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples (modern-day Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), and the reflections below are most certainly incomplete and imperfect.
[For more on this story by Catherine Bargen, go to http://jjie.org/2017/10/09/rev...restorative-justice/]
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