A comparison of the community roles of indigenous-operated Criminal justice organizations in Canada, the United States, and Australia

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Volumn 28, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 57-75

  Nielsen, Marianne O ^a  

^a NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 35348895263     PISSN: 01616463     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17953/aicr.28.3.72634858tm106t38     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. The forms of marginalization vary from country to country. For example, in Canada and the United States legal processes have forbidden indigenous peoples from holding religious ceremonies.
2. In all three countries educational processes restricted many indigenous children to poorly resourced residential/boarding schools, making them marginally unemployable; in all three countries political processes have forbidden indigenous peoples from voting and in Canada and the United States from forming political lobby groups; in all three countries economic processes made it illegal for indigenous people to work off their reservation, reserve, or mission without giving up their indigenous status. Any attempt to go against these processes was defined as criminal behavior. These processes also contributed to individual dysfunctional behavior such as family violence, drug abuse, and suicide.
3. See Marianne O. Nielsen, "Contextualization for Native American Crime and Criminal Justice Involvement," in Native Americans, Crime, and Justice, ed. Marianne O. Nielsen and Robert A. Silverman (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 10-19.
4. See Robert J. Chaskin, Prudence Brown, Sudhir Venkatesh, and Avis Vidal, Building Community Capacity (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2001).
5. This discussion of research methodology overlaps out of necessity with other writings by Nielsen.
6. See Marie Battiste and James (Sa'ke'j) Youngblood Henderson, Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage (Saskatoon, SK: Purich Publishing, 2000);
7. Susan Guyette, Community-Based Research: A Handbook for Native Americans (Los Angeles: American Indian Studies Center, UCLA, 1983);
8. Devon A. Mihesuah, American Indians: Stereotypes and Realities (Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 1996).
9. Since appropriate and respectful terminology varies in the United States, Canada, and Australia, I use the term indigenous peoples when referring to the indigenous peoples of all three countries.
10. This is the population estimate for 2001. The total Aboriginal inmate population for 1991 was 3.6 percent. For purposes of crime comparisons the percentage used is usually 3 percent.
11. For a discussion of the problems in calculating crime rates for indigenous peoples see Robert A. Silverman, "Patterns of Native American Crime," in Native Americans, Crime, and Justice, ed. Marianne O. Nielsen and Robert A. Silverman (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 58-74.
12. Lawrence A. Greenfield and Steven K. Smith, American Indians and Crime (Washington: US Department of Justice [cat. no. NCJ 173386], 1999);
13. James S. Frideres and Rene Gadacz, Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: Contemporary Conflicts, 6th ed. (Toronto: Prentice-Hall, 2001);
14. W. McLennan and Richard Madden, The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1999).
15. Unfortunately, for this kind of comparative research denominators and numerators used in the calculation of rates vary from country to country to reflect the differences in definitions of, for example, who is an indigenous person (denominator) and who is a prisoner (numerator).
16. First Nations people have been defined as "people who trace their ancestors in these lands to time immemorial" (Bradford W. Morse, Aboriginal Peoples and the Law: Indian, Metis, and limit Rights in Canada [Ottawa, ON: Carleton University Press, 1985], 1).
17. Anne Finn, Shelley Trevethan, Gisèle Carrière, and Melanie Kowalski, "Female Inmates, Aboriginal Inmates and Inmates Serving Life Sentences: A One Day Snapshot," Juristat 19, no. 5 (1999): 5.
18. Frideres and Gadacz, Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, 131.
19. Greenfield and Smith, American Indians and Crime, 26.
20. US Department of Justice, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 1992 (Washington: GPO, 1993). It should be noted that American Indians make up much smaller proportions of the general population in these states: 15.6 percent (Alaska), 7.3 percent (South Dakota), 6 percent (Montana), and 4.1 percent (North Dakota). (Jack Utter, American Indians: Answers to Today's Qitestions [Lake Ann, MI: National Woodlands Publishing, 1993], 18-19).
21. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Corrective Services Australia, June Quarter 2000 (Melbourne: Commonwealth of Australia, 2000), 5.
22. For contact information for each organization see Appendix B.
23. Chaskin et al., Building Community Capacity, 63.
24. See, e.g., the (Canadian) Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Aboriginal Peoples and the Justice System (Ottawa: Canada Communication Group Publishing, 1993)
25. for the United States see Vine Deloria Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle, American Indians, American Justice (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983)
26. for Australia see Rick Sarre, "Indigenous Australians and the Administration of Criminal Justice," in Considering Crime and Justice: Realities and Responses, ed. Rick Sarre and John Tomaino (Adelaide, SA: Crawford House, 2000), 211-41.
27. "Native Title" refers to the rights of Aboriginal families to have access to traditional lands to perform ceremonies, for example. This is not the same as making a "land claim," which is for the actual possession of the land.
28. C. Matthew Snipp, American Indians: The First of this Land (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1989), 249;
29. Frideres and Gadacz, Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, 91;
30. Australian Bureau of Statistics, The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1999).
31. See, e.g., Marianne O. Nielsen, "A Comparison of Canadian Native Youth Justice Committees and Navajo Peacemakers: A Summary of Research Results,"Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 14, no. 1 (Feb. 1998): 6-25.
32. James W. Zion, "The Navajo Peacemaker Court: Deference to the Old and Accommodation to the New," American Indian Law Review 11 (1983): 92.
33. The ALRM has political advocacy as one objective because of the dearth of indigenous political organizations in South Australia and the great need for advocacy in a continuing hostile political climate.
34. Menno Boldt, Surviving as Indians: The Challenge of Self-Government (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 116.