Boomerang
My fingers read
Its journey
Roberta Beary, 2009 Haiku #311, The Dreaming Collection,
I was struck by how collaborative Richard’s presentation was – we were invited into the learning experience by sharing with our classmates and him our thoughts. This opened up lines of conversation that would not have been had if it had just been done in a standard lecture format.
I was also struck by the idea of life as upwards spiral and that if you stuff up you go back to the centre of it. The community rallies around you just they do when you are a child or elderly and you ultimately pass on knowledge to the next generation. To some extent this has similarities to the heroic journeys that the protagonists in Homeric epics go on or the Jungian architype of the explorer. In my own life passing on things that I know to my nephew links him to me because he’s using knowledge that I thought him. As you move through different stages of life, your role shifts. Similarly, Aboriginal people’s knowledge about how to live links them to their ancestors and strengthens both culture and their families. This is accelerated by the shared song lines of neighbouring people making knowledge open source.
Another new thing I learned was the impact of sitting in a circle where you see all the other members of the community in contrast to the western style courtroom where you can avoid looking at the other party. I hadn’t really thought about this before but I can see why it matters – so much of human communication is non-verbal, seeing the other person face on lets you see how they react to what you say and gives you a truer insight into their inner world than their words alone which can lead to a better outcome for the parties. (Strang et al.) This links in with Aboriginal notions of justice equating to balance – a better outcome is a more balanced outcome. (Marchetti & Daly)
The holistic nature of Aboriginal dispute resolution was a point I struggled to fully grasp. Western-style dispute resolution tends to focus on the points of contention between the parties one by one, the Aboriginal focus on how interpersonal relationships tie in to the land itself is a real point of difference with many other cultures. The gap between the two systems reminded me of the story of the 5 blind men trying to describe an elephant by touching different parts of it. Each one is not necessarily wrong, but they miss the bigger picture. It was interesting to see an entirely different perspective on a subject to what I was used to – and indeed would never have even thought to be a factor in resolving a dispute. It will be something that I will have in mind dealing with Aboriginal clients when I am in practice in the future because it might lead to a better outcome than could otherwise be achieved by reducing an issue to its constituent parts.
Strang, Heather & Sherman, Lawrence & Angel, Caroline & Woods, Daniel & Bennett, Sarah & Newbury-Birch, Dorothy & Inkpen, Nova. (2006). Victim Evaluations of Face‐to‐Face Restorative Justice Conferences: A Quasi‐Experimental Analysis. Journal of Social Issues. 62. 281 - 306. 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2006.00451.x.
Marchetti E & Daly K 2004. Indigenous courts and justice practices in Australia. Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 277. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. https://aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi277.
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