ABSTRACT
This book comes to an unexpected conclusion. Contrary to past and current fears that a restorative approach would further endanger abused children and adults, a Canadian project in Newfoundland and Labrador found just the reverse. Looking back at a project that took place three decades ago brings into view how the restorative process, although not inevitably successful, is remarkably suited to increasing the safety and wellbeing of families with histories of family violence. Hindsight, assisted by ongoing experience with a restorative approach in different settings, leads to the following explanation. The process supports families and their cultural networks and involved services in defamiliarizing, that is, making strange and pushing aside, family violence while recentering the value of kinship ties. Defamiliarizing family violence and recentering family and community networks is feminist kin-making in action. Four narrative threads identify central questions within feminist kin-making, and inherent in each is a contradictory tension that could unravel the gains.
