Evolving Redressing Reconciling Treaties

This paper provides some tentative frameworks which may be usefully shared and adapted to specific localities and contexts if locals want to use them to support the forming of specific treaties, processes, agreements, and other undertakings addressing and redressing specific loss and harm that has happened and or continues to happen in differing contexts around the world.

It is expressed in tentative language as it relates to extremely vexing and challenging issues –vex from the Latin vexare ‘to shake, jolt, or toss violently’ hence meaning to:

Cause difficulty or trouble to

Cause pain or physical distress to

Afflict 

In these contexts, any imposing only perpetuates loss and harm. Nothing much of substance may happen unless the people involved are ready and willing to be involved and actually become involved. Around the world there has been and continues to be many contexts that cry out for action addressing past and continuing loss and harm to first peoples, ethnic groups, communities, cultures, societies, nations, and other collectives. Action is needed that may redress loss and harm, and reconcile previously conflicted people.

One Starting Place

Involve some people:

a) Who have experienced attending Thriving People and Earth Celebration Gatherings, and

b) Agree to follow Guiding Principles as contained in the Thriving People and Earth Treaty, and

c) Who have signed that Treaty

Redressing

Redressing: A verb having, but not limited to, the following meanings (alpha order):

compensating

correcting

healing – as in ‘to make whole again’

putting to right

putting/setting/making right

recognising

rectifying

reforming

remedying

repairing

resolving

restoring

retrieving

returning

righting

set right

settling

sorting out

Redressing

Perhaps having some culturally and inter-culturally appropriate processes for setting out all of the matters needing redressing possibly including and not limited to:

1. The people involved as perpetrators and their descendents

2. The people affected and their descendents

3. What happened – the context - when and where

4. The consequences and implications of what happened

5. Redress actions being asked for by the aggrieved

6. Processes for agreeing upon and implementing action in ways that heal, as in make whole, and not cause further loss and harm

7. If compensation, what forms, how much, to whom, by whom; comparison to compensation for ‘falling over in the street’; other actions, e.g., reparation

8. Minimising the redress and reconciling process itself being retraumatising

9. What are the past, current, and future implications from past and continuing loss and harm

10. What culturally appropriate processes for making recommendations; who involved

11. The involvement of symbolism and substance

12. Supporting aggrieved people to refraining from using on others the very actions that they have been subjected to

13. The use/non use of judicial processes and civil claims through court systems; institutional responses; Royal Commissions; reviewing the often brutal nature of cross examination in some judicial processes; possible reform of these; issues for and of governments’ defending redress litigation

14. Issues of statutory limitations on Redress Action; reform

15. Issues where past loss and harm were ‘legal at the time’

16. Processes for presenting to the perpetrators; to the wider public(s)

17. Relationally mediating understandings about processes and establishing agreement within and between people involved, or who may become involved as to how, what, when, and where redress actions will be taken separately, and together:

a. by the perpetrators and/or their descendents, and

b. by the other’s involved

in ways whereby perpetrators cease and desist loss and harm, and using ways that are generating healing for all involved, and having people moving forward with mutual respect

18. Healing intergenerational trauma

19. Issues of proof and lack of records; use of indigenous research methodologies; perhaps using Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s twenty five Indigenous Research Projects namely – creating, democratising, discovering, envisioning, negotiating, naming, networking, reframing, remembering, restoring, revitalizing, sharing, storytelling, and enabling and fostering proactive action research, structural change and cultural change

20. Integrating care and support in culturally appropriate ways – health and wellness, education, employment, reconnecting with culture and similar matters

21. Whole of community self-help and mutual help

22. Non-political conversations; gaining support of the wider public for redress and reconciling action

23. Shying clear of ‘remedial’ expert-delivery process that continue loss and harm and replicate past error

24. Recognising all of the implications flowing from past and current loss and harm; examples: high incarceration rates, low educational achievement, high unemployment, poor health, permanent injury and incapacities, people in care; and taking appropriate restorative action

25. Addressing complications resulting from delay in Redress and Reconciling

26. Exploring Scope:

a. Who and what is embraced in specific actions, for example, does it apply to all of a large collective or does sub groups want to take their own action

a. Are all matters included in one action or are matters best addressed and redressed in differing actions – some examples:

a) Return of cultural materials from overseas museums

b) Stolen generations

c) Loss of culture

d) Loss of lands

e) Loss of health

27. Using the learning from the redress and reconciling processes to:

a. inform and frame future action

b. Review current law and regulation to ensure it doesn’t creating loss and harm

28. Considering Directive Guiding Principles in policy and regulatory forming and implicating; perhaps following the Guiding Principles of the Thriving People and Earth Treaty

Linking Redressing to Reconciling

Over many decades healers and nurturers have been sensing what redressing and reconciling ways work in various contexts, and then, passing these ways on to locals in other contexts if they want to use or adapt them.

These processes may be made available if local people want to explore them for:

Transforming and integral healing

Increasing inter-cultural understanding

Consciousness Raising

Inter-cultural Relational Mediating

Whole community to whole community reconciling ceremonies

Negotiating of meaning

Cultural and Intercultural Transformative Reconciling Processes of potency

Establishing culturally appropriate healing processes

Ceremonies of cultural and inter-cultural significance and potency

Wide community involvement in the above processes