9 M ost traditional Indian justice methods address cognitive dissonance and shame. They involve relatives. They use ceremony and prayer to bond people to the process and to involve the Spirits in both the path to a solution and a binding decision. It is a process which gets to the bottom of things. The Navajo word for it is k'e , the Lakota term is ti ospaye , and the Zulu word is ubuntu .
Indigenous peoples believe in individual freedom, but it is exercised in the context of the group.
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.