Description
Peace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada is by author Harold R. Johnson, a member of Montreal Lake Cree Nation and previously a defense councillor and Crown prosecutor. Peace and Good Order is part of the text of the British North American Act of 1867 and reinterpreted through later statutes to grant the power to maintain peace and good order. In this work the peace and good order and good government is seen in the relationships with Treaty 6 and other Nations, between Treaty 6 Nations and others residing and/or passing through treaty land. Yet it is also a condemnation of the Canadian state’s failure to deliver justice to Indigenous Peoples as interpreted by Harold Johnson and his part in this history. Incarceration rates for Indigenous men, women and children are included. The amendment to the Criminal Code (section 718.2 e) as an outcome of Supreme Court ruling that takes into account Indigenous circumstances including the effects of the residential school system, family breakdown, dislocation, dispossession, poverty, colonialism, and poor living conditions, has had little effect on the climbing incarceration numbers. This Code is not necessarily obeyed by judges amidst the expectations of fair justice by Indigenous Peoples. This work draws on the Indian Act and racism. Northern Saskatchewan communities’ crime statistics, while included, are also discussed from the perspective of individual and community trauma, alcoholism but also of redemption (not deterrence) and responsibility. Education, health, family services, industry, environment, local community administration and justice are all involved in trauma care to reduce incarceration rates with the assistance of peace officers and evidence-based recidivism approaches or not.