Video demonstrates elders’ approach to dealing with criminals

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Community groups across Nunavut can soon sit down with a video teaching them how elders would use age-old techniques to resolve crimes today.

Iqaluit’s restorative justice society is launching the video in an effort to put a more Inuit touch on alternative approaches to justice in the territory.

The society, known as Amaat Katimajiit, takes accused criminals sent to them by the courts, to resolve conflicts in the community that don’t involve a high level of violence. The accused criminals are usually young offenders.

Myna Ishuluktak, the government of Nunavut’s liaison for the society, said the elders and trained mediators follow Inuit traditions in resolving the conflicts, in a way that the court system doesn’t.

“I think Inuit need to take more control,” she said. “We need to work with those people instead of just sending them to court.”

Ishuluktak helped host a two-day workshop at the elders centre in Iqaluit last week, with elders, social workers from around the territory, and a senior prison official. Participants came from various communities, including Rankin Inlet, Pond Inlet, Kimmirut and Pangnirtung.

The society hopes to turn the workshop recordings into a series of videos that will answer two questions – “What is Restorative Justice?” and “How should mediation be conducted?” – by showing participants in hypothetical mediation sessions.

Ishuluktak said the videos will show that the key to a successful mediation session involves keeping an open mind about why an offender got into trouble.

“Sometimes, we don’t try to understand where they’re coming from,” Ishuluktak said. “Sometimes, we’re just judging them, and so we don’t understand.”

If they can find funding, the society will release a third video, focusing on how elders used to settle conflicts, before the arrival of the criminal justice system.

Annie Nattaq, an elder from Iqaluit, sees restorative justice as “Inuit counselling.” Nattaq is co-chair of the society, and participates in the group of elders who meet with offenders who admit to low-level crimes like vandalism or break-ins.

“People want to use more Inuit traditional ways now,” Nattaq said in an interview in Inuktitut. “We are a committee who wants to help our fellow Inuit people.

“We also want to learn more how to help the best way we can.”

Nattaq remembers Inuit had a highly personalized approach to resolving conflict, before judges and lawyers arrived.

She said elders and community members would gather in a circle around the person who stole something, or did harm to someone else. The person in the middle would speak about what happened, and listen to the community’s reaction.

Nattaq said Inuit are careful to ask about whether the crime was committed because the person has personal problems, such as mental illness.

She said it’s also important to make a connection between the offender and the community circle.

For example, if the accused person lowers his head in shame, a person from the circle would approach him and lift up his chin, until he made eye contact with them.

“If we can open up the person we’re dealing with, that’s the important part,” Nattaq said.

Workshop participants found the Inuit approach to resolving conflict isn’t very different from the “restorative justice” model being increasingly promoted in schools for discipline, and in aboriginal communities around Canada.

That model stresses the importance of solutions coming from the community, without resorting to heavy punishments.

Chris Freeman, a workshop facilitator from Winnipeg, said he was impressed with how much emphasis the elders put on forgiving a person, after they’ve owned up to their harmful actions.

“If someone did something wrong, they held them accountable,” Freeman said. “They say ‘now that you’ve done what you needed to do, you will not be reminded of it again.

“‘You’re welcome back in the community.'”

The video is due to be released across Nunavut by September. The $30,000 in funding for the project comes from the GN department of justice.

Translation by Itee Akavak.