6 Decolonization and Restorative Justice
Hamza Said
Title: Restorative Justice: Decolonizing the White-Washed Monster Within
Abstract
Indigenous peoples and minorities in settler colonial states constitute the majority of incarcerated people in Canada. In recent years, there has been a deep awakening as to why this over-representation of Indigenous peoples and minorities takes place in settler colonial criminal justice systems. Contemporary colonialism has been a recurring topic of interest in the quest to understand the incarceration rate of minorities and Indigenous peoples in colonial states. Monchalin (2016) defines contemporary colonialism as “a method of postmodern colonization in which domination is still based on settler rules and priorities but settlers calculate and perform more indirect or crafty ways of achieving their goals” (p. 74). Such indirect or devious methods have flooded restorative justice, polluting it. Restorative justice no longer aids in reducing the over-representation of minorities and Indigenous peoples in the criminal justice system of settler-colonial states, since the start of the copy and paste method of restorative justice. In fact, restorative justice may now contribute more harm because of its lack of cultural competence and top-down approach. This paper begins with an overview of decolonization then goes on to illustrate the impacts of colonization, and end the section in a discussion on three decolonial case studies of restorative justice practices: Maori Justice Practices in New Zealand, Pashtun Jirga in Pakistan, and Conflict Resolution and Visions of Haida in Canada. The paper concludes with a brief section on limitations of decolonization.
Keywords: Impacts of Colonization, Decolonization, Restorative Justice, Decolonizing Restorative Justice.
Introduction
Indigenous peoples and minorities do not have faith in the legitimacy of the systems, organizations, and actors in charge of and facilitating dispute resolution in colonial settler nations. This is why restorative justice was created. However, restorative justice has morphed into a process and practice that deviates from its origins and purpose, which was to give voice to the voiceless. Decolonization of restorative justice is important because it fixes the colonial power imbalances and acknowledges the monstrous biases and racism deeply embedded within restorative justice.
At the height of its murderous imperial scheming, the Europeans brutalized millions of Indigenous people (Burkhart, 2020, p. 62). The European colonization was characterized by such monstrous acts as cultural genocide and the simultaneous spread of white supremacist ideologies. According to Gahman (2016), European settlers and the system that arose from the colonization was a dehumanizing “monster”: “colonialism’s aggressive policy of land seizure and ethnic cleansing amplified, whilst also becoming highly gendered. This can be seen in images of Indigenous women who were represented