talkin' in the free world

If, for whatever reason (such as being my mom) you follow this blog closely, you might notice that I’ve removed some of my previous posts. It’s not something I really feel good about doing, but I feel much worse about the potential for offence or misapprehension that may, without intent, take place in the process of writing about people and places whose truths I see neither fully nor completely. The reality, as someone much wiser than me in these ways explained it, is that the court’s ‘visits’ to the territories of the northern First Nations are akin to invitations into another’s home, and I wouldn’t abuse my privilege as a guest by talking to strangers about the colour of my hosts’ walls or the state of their kitchen. This is all the more so considering that this work affords me such a slight and distorted perspective, my visits head-spinningly brief and, perhaps necessarily, focussed on what is and seems wrong wrong wrong rather than on an ever-richer whole.

But while I must acknowledge the above, and determine not to tread on toes to which I haven’t been adequately introduced, it seems equally true to me – and this the point of this entire blog – that all of us are poorer if we do not seek to test the integrity of our connections, to bolster some and cut off others without first and always asking questions about who’s heard, who’s hurt, what actions and inactions mean. I admit that I don’t yet know much about what allows the court in to spin its authority every few weeks or months, whether there are nuanced arrangements and permissions behind our periodic arrivals in those small gyms and community halls. I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes to make our presence rarer or irrelevant. I suspect, though, knowing what little I do about the powers and presumptions held by our dominant politico-legal paradigm, and reflecting on the little experience I’ve had as one of its masks, that the court is somewhat more and less than an invited guest in our obliging host nations’ homes. “It’s not a justice system,” an Indigenous leader told me bluntly, “it’s a legal system, sure, but it’s not a justice system”. I hear responsibility in these words, and a massive challenge too.

So I will try to stop writing about the specifics of the communities we go to. I am not an appropriate reflector of these places, which I hope is absolutely clear. But I do see an urgent need to keep writing about the more overarching aspects of the criminal court system’s manifestation here, and how, most broadly, our inter-national country can understand itself in this realm. I’m new and naïve, but this is my work, and quite possibly yours as well. We need to talk.