ABSTRACT

The United Nations monitoring committees for these treaties regularly question the compliance of countries like Australia, Canada and the United States in relation to their treatment of Indigenous peoples within criminal justice systems. This chapter looks at the normative framework of human rights provided by the Declaration in the context of Indigenous peoples’ assertions of their right to ‘justice’. Self-determination is closely linked to the second principle of participation. Participation in decision-making requires participation in both internal Indigenous community decisionmaking, as well as external decision-making processes with government, industry and nongovernment organizations. The rights of Indigenous peoples to self-determination are given little weight by those charged with reforming criminal justice in settler colonial jurisdictions. Indigenous night patrols began in the Northern Territory in the 1980s and subsequently developed in most states of Australia over the next two decades.