Aboriginal Contexts and Worldviews

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in Aboriginal Contexts: A Critical Review

Prepared by Wenona Victor (Sto:lo Nation) for Canadian Human Rights Commission, April 2007 (41 pages).

http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/pdf/adrred_en.pdf

I came across this document when one of our discussion threads led to sharing meanings of “Indian Time.” The title also caught my attention as I had recently read this statement in John Ralston Saul’s book A Fair Country (2008): “our courts are far ahead of our political scientists, politicians and philosophers…[they] have now understood the First Nations’ assumptions at the time of the treaties” (p. 64).

In discussing alternative dispute resolution (ADR), Wenona Victor draws on current studies and reflections about Aboriginal contexts related to the role of power, language, women’s voices, culture and land; and the contrast of worldviews including concepts of individuality, unity of life, time, societal organization, leadership, reciprocity. “By posing both theoretical and practical questions, the text is a means by which colonial assumptions maybe be deconstructed. This analysis is helpful in shedding light on several colonial assumptions that often feed, and in many instances impede, the proper resolution of disputes between two often diametrically opposed worldviews” (p. 7).

This document informed me on other matters in addition to “relationship building in ‘Indian’ time” (p. 29). For example, my thinking was challenged in the section about the “elicitive” approach to mediation (i.e. an approach requiring the mediator to take the lead from the parties involved and recognize the process as both a functional and political one) and the Western cultural presuppositions involved in the belief that “the best mediator will be an outsider, impartial and unbiased” (p. 30). As an example that “claiming Western norms and values as universal undermines” a process like mediation, the author writes, “oral tradition within Indigenous communities…often dictates who can and cannot speak on a subject. Those who are considered impartial and neutral are also disconnected and lack personal involvement; they are therefore not authorized to speak” p. 32).