ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of restorative justice practitioners in addressing root causes of crime. It follows the troubling contours of colonialism in Canada, to point towards a more enduring, peaceful and just relationship between Settler and Aboriginal peoples. The chapter concerns that if practitioners are facilitating restorative justice programs with Aboriginal peoples, or in Aboriginal communities, without proper attention to colonialism, they might be participating in a similar type of oppression to the criminal justice system. At the foundation of poverty, substance use and cultural conflict is the fact that Canada has treated Aboriginal people in a criminal, colonial way for the entire history, including the present day, of white Europeans being on Aboriginal soil. Since Aboriginal peoples never relinquished their rights to self-determination and governance then the Indian Act, among other legislation, is in direct competition with Aboriginal laws. Many settlers have wrongly assumed the absence of Aboriginal legal reality, or chosen to ignore it.
