NCJ Number
141312
Date Published
1992
Length
40 pages
Annotation
This report describes the dislocation of Canadian aboriginal society by the type of justice brought by the European colonists and proposes a process and a set of initiatives that would permit the coexistence of mainstream justice with the laws and legal institutions of the Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en.
Abstract
The justice system brought to Canada by the Europeans has been very destructive of both the individual and community life of its aboriginal people. This report proposes the implementation of an alternative in northwestern British Columbia that will allow the dispute- resolution laws and methods of the Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en people to interact with the provincial justice system in a way that does not undermine the integrity of either. The proposal focuses on the training and education of people from both the Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en communities and the social and justice agencies. The Unlocking Aboriginal Justice Project will take 3 years to complete, for a cost of just over $2 million. Once in place, the program will not require an ongoing bureaucratic structure or ongoing project costs. The Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en deal with antisocial behavior differently from the individualized adversarial methods of the western system that uses punishment as its main sanction. They rely on social censure within the kinship network as a sanction and give more attention to compensation by the offender's extended family or house group. Appended supplementary information