Indigenous justice uses respect, consensus, solidarity, mutuality, interdependence, relationships, reciprocity, and even love as the means to heal in traditional justice methods. Those are values which bind the individual to the group and the group to support the individual. We do not see those values at play in Canadian or American courts or legislatures. I n sum, Indian thought is sophisticated thought. It is humanist, and humanism is a value which has been lost in the current social Darwinist climate.
Indian law uses emotions and feelings but rationalist thought rejects it.
Emotion was thrown out the window in the structure of modern Western law as it is found in the U.S. and Canada. W estern law is based on punishment, and Indian law 11 is based on healing. The problem with many contemporary justice initiatives directed at Indians is that they are integrationist and ultimately assimilationist. Assimilation is a genocidal and ethnocidal force which is not yet prohibited by human rights law, but it should be. Indian justice works because it heals.