Friends,
I was thinking recently about some of the groups and school classes we have hosted at The Village over the past year. This is a big part of our advocacy and education program, in that we discuss some of the important language we use here in ITAV (dignity, respect, allyship, hunger, empathy, etc.) and, along with serving patrons and sorting donations, we engage the groups with problem-solving “real life” scenarios.
Not only do the scenarios create an opportunity for participants to experience another’s life through a lens of compassion and empathy, but it often helps them to understand more about resources within our community. Through these exercises, lived experiences that are most certainly present in our communities but not easily visible, now have a very human face. The participant teams are given maybe 20 minutes or so to work through an understanding of their scenario and then bring it back to their whole group and share the supportive and helping strategies. It is a very moving experience to witness the compassion, resourcefulness and empathy involved in their solutions and discussions.
What started me thinking about these times when youth and their mentors have come to ITAV was the situation of several youth recently involved in vandalism at a local manufacturing facility. The damage reported – to a business that has provided employment and community support for almost 75 years now – was substantial. Understandably, people were angry and emotional.
Perhaps to the youth it was an act with no main objective other than to wreak havoc, but to the employees and community, it must feel very personal. And how could it not? One does not have to search very long to see the outcry and anger on social media about this crime, with many expressing potential punishments and some shaming the parents of these youth for not doing better. And while I was thinking all this over, an article from the Kitchener Record from May 24, 1974 kept coming to my mind. It is an article I have seen many times in my studies and in my training as a mediator.
More commonly known in restorative justice circles as “The Elmira Case,” it reports on the actions of two intoxicated teenagers who went on a destructive rampage in their community, smashing windshields and slashing tires, breaking storefront windows at a Beer Store, church and residences, damaging a boat, and ultimately perpetuating feelings of fear, anger and retribution among community members. As the situation headed for court, with the youth being charged with and pleading guilty to over 20 charges and facing the potential for criminal sentences, two men involved with The Mennonite Central Committee, Mark Yantzi and Dave Worth, took a chance on the idea that bringing these teens together with the community they had victimized, in a supportive and safe space, could bring more impact to the lives of these young men and the healing of the community, than an incarceration sentence.
The story goes that Yantzi, a probation officer at the time of the Elmira incident, recognized that the longstanding Indigenous model of bringing an offender and a victim together, with family, supports and stakeholders, was necessary in realizing the humanized component to the crimes and those affected by it. In the custodial/retributive model Yantzi was familiar with through his work, he recognized that there was little opportunity for personal accountability or for the offender to understand the impact of their crime and repair the harm done, both the physical damage as well as the psychological impact and broken relationships. With the Indigenous model of restorative justice and healing, although the community could express to the offender how their actions affected them, it also allowed for the offender to know the community embraced and supported them. If I understand correctly, Yantzi felt this to be a far more beneficial process when looking at long-term conflict resolution.
When I was thinking about these youth who allegedly did this damage here in Listowel, I wondered, if I gave this crime as a scenario for groups who come to ITAV in the future, what solutions they would come up with, to bring a resolution to this scenario. Would youth who are the same age as these alleged offenders want them to be incarcerated? Could they see a place where this Indigenous restorative justice model is beneficial? Would it be the “eye for an eye” retribution, or would they hope for something that brought these teens (and their people) together with people of the community to which they belonged? And could healing come, for both the victims and offenders, from such an exercise?
Our current retributive justice system model sees the repair of justice by imposing penalties that “fit the crime.” It is a model that, understandably and necessarily, can create an adversarial barrier between victim and offender. Perhaps Yantzi felt that the restorative justice model was a way for the people to share the impact of the crime and humanize the damage, but to also show the youth that they were part of the community and as such, worth the investment and support.
It is as the African proverb writes – it really does take a village to raise a child.
Take good care of each other, friends.
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Andrea Charest serves as the director of It Takes A Village in Listowel.
