Snaking through the delta
The CBC Forum on indigenous justice underlined the fact that Northern communities, composed generally of well-intentioned and law abiding members, have not acted as nations by taking control of their non law-abiding members. The point is that, ultimately, if there was Northern justice, southern justice would not have to step in.
I see this problem in Court all the time, where the presiding Judge is faced with sentencing an individual who has injured another member of the community and having no real option but to send him or her to jail. The southern justice paradigm the Judge brings with her/him includes the idea of jail as a collective expression of repudiation for the violence that brings the offender before the Court.
