photo from Waswaagoning Village
To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding;
To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.
-Proverbs 1
In this community group that has been meeting in an effort to support youth and dismantle racism, we regularly share possibilities and stories of how to go about accomplishing these aims.
This story is an incredible example of how establishing restorative justice can do much to heal the hurt and bring understanding to those who have committed hate crimes. Restorative justice has its roots in native American and Aborigine culture. It basically provides a way for the victim and the perpetrator to come together to address the wrongs done and find a healing solution for themselves and their communities.
In this story, Nick and Charlotte, from the Ojibway nation, are the ones whose property was vandalized and who set up a jail time alternative for the perpetrators. These notes were taken from one of our community meetings:
As many of you remember, five (white) local Lakeland area boys vandalized and burned the Hocking’s Waswaagoning Village (a remake of an Ojibway village) a few years ago. It was a terrible act of hatred fueled by drinking. The boys were eventually caught and faced 35 years in prison-each.
Nick and Charlotte both felt that sending these boys to prison was not going to accomplish anything good-that in fact they might come out more prejudice than when they went in.
They did something really quite remarkable in order to try and make sure these boys lives were not destroyed-they offered the 5 boys a path through Restorative Justice-the option to fulfill certain requirements over a two year period instead of going to jail for arson felony.
They spent a great deal of time working with these boys and developed a path for them to follow: the boys had to read 4 books, write reports, answer 5 questions about racism, pay fines and complete 250 hours of community service.
They also had to make a video describing what they did to share with others-in the hope that others would learn from the mistakes these boys made and not do such things. This process had a powerful impact on these boys and the Hocking’s, through their actions, have shown the rest of us that there are other options for enforcing consequences while helping teach youth to learn from their mistakes. We watched the first two interviews of the boys and then took time to talk and share responses......
In the end, the process was successful for those boys who went through the restorative justice process.
From this meeting came all kinds of ways to further the role of restorative justice in our own local courts, as well as discussion on how the video could be used as a teaching tool. Other ways to spread this message of restorative justice were discussed.
The impact of the patience, dignity, understanding and trust the Hockings had that this situation could be healed is an inspiration.
For more on restorative justice practices, click here.
To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.
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