An Indigenous Commentary on the Globalisation of Restorative Justice
| Author | Juan Tauri |
| Pages | 35-55 |
35
AN INDIGENOUS COMMENTARY ON THE
GLOBALISATION OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
Juan Tauri, Lecturer, Faculty of Law, School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology,
Brisbane
Abstract
The study and impact of the globalisation of crime control policy and related p roducts
have recently b egun to receive significant attention from critical Indigenous scholars. The
reasons for the increa sing focus on this issue include the re storative justice industry’s
increasing utilisation of so-called ‘Indigenous’ philosophies and practices in the design of
its various products; and the increasing global popularity of supposedly 'Indigenou s-
inspired' restorative justice initiatives, not only in settler colonial contexts, but throughout
Western jurisdictions, as a response to crime control issue s relating to minorities. The
purpose of this paper is t o provide an I ndigenous critique of the globalisation of
restorative justice and the industry’s utilisation of Indigenous practices, symbols and
philosophies in the marketing of its produ cts. The paper will focus on the impact that the
international transfer of restorative products is having on relationships between
Indigenous peoples and central governments in settler colonial jurisdictions, particularly
New Zealand and Canada, and on Indigenous peoples' drive for greater self -determination
in these jurisdictions.
Keywords
family group conferencing; globalisation; Indigenous peoples; restorative just ice
British Journal of Community Justice
©2014 Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield
ISSN 1475-0279
Vol. 12(2): 35-55
Tauri
36
Introduction
This paper is intended as a small offering in response to the challenge posed by Muncie
(2005), O’Malley (2002) and Stenson (2005) for criminological analysis of the globalisation
of crime control to move from obsessive macro-theorising about ‘its’ shape and depth,
and instead begin analysing the micro-level impact of all this globalised, criminological
activity. The manuscript also serves as a response to Aas’ call for our discipline to:
'…take up an old debt of omission and explore more systematically
connections between globalisation and colo nisation [which is] essential if
we are address the imbalances of power an d the dynamics of othering and
social exclusion in the present world order.' (2009:413)
A further motivation for this paper is my wish to privilege the experiences of Indigenous
peoples of contemporary manifestations of globalised European Justice8, for as Fenelon
and Muguia (2008:1657) rightly argue:
'In the telling of man’s [sic] global project, the story of indigenous peoples
has been woven into the fabric of globality, yet th e leading experts on
globalisation have either ignored the role of indigenous peoples or reduced
their existence to pre-packaged terms such as the ‘fourth world’ or as
ethnics in ‘developing nations’ or even hidden in the broader ‘periphery’.'
It is the modest intention of the author that through this paper In digenous peoples’ ‘real
world’ experiences of the globalisation of restorative justice will draw the discipline’s
attention to the meso and micro-level impacts of the inter-jurisdictional travels of their
theories, crime control products, and legislation. Arguably, privileging Indigenous peoples’
experiences of the globalisation of cri me control is important for the development of
criminological analysis of the phenomenon. After all, th e Indigenous peoples of Africa, the
Americas and the South Pacific have experienced an almost continuous process of cross-
border tra nsfer of crime control products throughout th e last 200 years or more.
Furthermore, imported criminal justice system s were a significant tool in the colonialists’
attempts to eradicate Indigenous life-worlds, strategies that manifest in the contemporary
moment in th e form of violent policing strategies, and our significant over-representation
in criminal justice statistics. And yet despite all this, the Indigenous voice is often silenced
in the vast lexicon produced by the Western Academy (Tauri, 2012). Therefore, the time
has come for us to speak for ourselves; to challenge the often negative impact of the
8 Further rationale for privileging the experience(s) of Indigenous peoples residing in Settler
Societies include the significant, over-representation of First Nation peoples in all Settler Society
criminal justice systems (Cunneen, 2006; Tauri, 2004); the vast amount of evidence of bias, racism
perpetrated against Indigenous peoples by the agents of crime control, not to mention the part
played by them in the genocidal phases of colonisation that Indigenes refers to as the ‘killing times’;
the historical lack of focus by Eurocentric crimi nology on research with Indigenous peoples, that
enables their experiences to be reflected through the research generated by the discipline; and
finally the right of Indigenous peoples to speak for themselves about issues that concern them, a
right recently confirmed through the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
(United Nations, 2008).
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