 My name is Paula Marshall. I'm part of the EMAW community here in Nova Scotia. The last time I did a presentation, I said I had seven sons, seven dogs, and seven grandchildren. But in the past year, we've upped that to 10 grandchildren. So they just seem to be growing, taking over. I'm here to talk about Aboriginal culture and customs as it pertains to justice. And I think I'm going to start a little bit about talking about why the dominant justice system perhaps isn't working as well for our Aboriginal people and the reasons that we do things a little bit differently. Now we've always had governments even before the Western Europeans came. We've always had rules of governing society, ways of resolving disputes, but we didn't have them documented. And I think that has also been a challenge for Western society is because we didn't have anything written down, they assumed we didn't have any. We had very vast, complicated relationships and processes that we dealt with other communities, within our own communities. And even when the Europeans came, we also had very vast trading and ways of economy of dealing with the dominance of subtle. They weren't dominant then. To begin to understand Aboriginal culture, I think we have to talk a little bit first about our elders and the role that elders play. Elders which can be both men and women. And though we assume elders are seniors, seniors and elders aren't the same thing. Our elders are teachers, there are knowledge keepers. They're the ones who through life experiences now have the right to show the rest of us and through stories usually on the most appropriate way of doing things. This is really challenging within the dominant justice system as elders don't have a role and it is all based on employment who has the job rather than who has earned the position that they're in through the community. One of the most complicating factors for our people is that we're dealing with two world views. An obvious example of this would be in even pleading guilty. In our communities, well in Western society, the dominant culture, pleading guilty is seen as a right. You can either plead guilty or not guilty and there's nothing seen to nothing wrong with that. In our culture, by pleading guilty, you're not being honest and not seen as being disrespectful. Because in our communities, our relationships. So by pleading not guilty, you're going against the culture. You're going against what our elders and communities and the values that they're teaching you. And that we see a lot of Aboriginal people going through the justice system that just enter pleading guilty pleas and they don't even speak to a lawyer. One of the programs that we have is the Amal Court Worker Program. And through the Court Worker Program, we ensure that Aboriginal people going through the court system have an opportunity to talk to a lawyer and understand their rights within the dominant justice system. So that it's okay to plead guilty and there's different mitigating factors. But in our communities, there isn't mitigating factors, either we did it or we didn't. So that's always a challenge. The meaning of justice is understood differently by Aboriginal people. The dominant society tries to control actions that considers potential dangers are harmful through punishment or by enforcement, apprehension. And in our communities, the purpose of the justice system is seen to restore peace. It's seen to restore harmony and restore relationships. So that's very different from the dominant justice system. Our concepts of justice are very different as well. Indicating criminal code is a huge list of rules that you must not break. And in our communities, it's not so much a list of rules, but maybe a list of values that you are not supposed to break. In our communities, we have the seven sacred teachings. And they are, and we'll open down somewhere because I know I will forget. Judy will have to help me when I can't remember them. The seven sacred teachings include honesty, humility, sharing, respect, helping Judy, one of the other three, love, wisdom, and yes, how come you know what I know? These values are the values that govern our relationships and our involvement with other communities and other people and through kingship as well. And this is very different from the dominant society, which values independence, financial security, competitiveness. All of those are contradictory to the values that we're trying to teach our children. We also have smaller rules within our communities that affect how we deal with people. We have the rule of non-interference. So if somebody does something wrong, it's not our responsibility to try to correct them. So if a law is broken, it's not our responsibility to go and hold them accountable. It's their family's responsibility to hold them accountable. If we see that the person is misbehaving, we use social controls such as, lack of a better word, gossip or shaming, to identify what those inappropriate behaviors are. And no one wants to be the center of that, but we're not allowed to go and tell them that they're doing wrong, which is challenging. Parents allow children to make mistakes. In dominant culture, this is seen as lack of parenting skills. We allow our children to go and make mistakes. We allow our children to go and experiment. We even allow our older children to go and make mistakes because that's all about learning. And every event in your life is a learning experience and that's what we have been taught. We teach lessons through stories. So if you ever have an elder in your circle or in your process, you're going to hear lots of stories. Sometimes you have to be really creative to kind of wonder what was the point of that. But there is always a story and it's also alternative. So you can kind of sometimes make up whatever is appropriate at the moment. Kinship is very important in our communities and it's a responsibility of kids and your family members, your extended family, to be responsible for your behavior within the community. For larger interactions it may go to the Grand Council or it may go to a larger community group. Historically there was a feast called Liga Baltic. Liga Baltic was a New Year's feast but not on the traditional calendar in the years. It's held in February. And it was an opportunity where, like Judge Berry said, we had food. We always have food. And there would be a feast and at the end of this feast they would do the Abixic Dawn, which is the forgiveness piece. And forgiveness isn't even a word that can be actually translated well into English because forgiveness is something mutual. It has to go two ways. So a wrong doer has to forgive a person of her as well as the person of her has a responsibility to forgive the wrong doer, which is very challenging and especially with dominant culture where the victim is not asked to be responsible to forgive. But in our communities, in order for survival of the whole community, every person had a responsibility to forgive for wrongdoings even the unintentional ones. We also have values of non-competitiveness. This is just to show that we have a more cooperative approach. In our communities, if someone is pushing too hard or pushing too far, it's seen as something negative. It's not seen as if they're a go-getter. So we try to promote humility in all our communities. Another problematic thing for average people is emotional restraint. We are brought up many times not to show strong emotion. This is difficult within the court system where you're expected to cry when you're guilty or you're expected to show tears of remorse. But in our communities, you are to look down because eye contact is not appropriate either and be humble when you're in a position of being chastised or being, not the words you've judged, I don't know how to say, in English. And we see this as a challenge because a lot of people, average people, have identified through research and through people that have been in the Canadian criminal justice system that complicated grief and unresolved grief issues are very challenging for them and are the causes of many of their social behaviors or the wrongful behaviors because they've never had an opportunity to express them. And a lot of times we see challenges with addiction because many times under the influence of alcohol, they are more able to express those emotions. So what are some of the things that we're doing? I'm very proud to say that with the support of Judge Ken Chee, Judge Ken Williams, and Judge Lori Hapen in the court, we are looking at the first healing court for the New Brunswick community here in Nova Scotia. I do have to say my colleagues in New Brunswick already need us to it, and LC Bortwick has the first meet my original court in Atlantic Canada. We also work with, one of the things that Murray Sinclair said yesterday, is that through Section 718 and the Gladstone decision, there is supposed to be an opportunity for the judges, its legislation that judges must consider the special circumstances of Aboriginal people. All of the systemic factors like residential school, the 60s school, addiction, suicide, poor housing, overcrowdedness, all of those things have to be taken into consideration. But we don't really have a tool to bring that information forward, other than a Gladstone report. And here in Nova Scotia we're very fortunate to have the support of Aboriginal government to provide Gladstone reports for judges that are sentencing Aboriginal people. And our colleagues from PEI now are also doing other Gladstone reports for the courts as well. Spirituality is also a very important part of the processes that we use. Spirituality, we begin with a smudge, we have an opening prayer, a lot of times many of our people are asked to go through with a sweat lodge ceremony or burning ceremony, keeper of the sacred fire. A lot of these things that we're trying to incorporate and bring back to our people who have never experienced it. What I want to say about restorative justice, and many have heard me speak over in our group the last couple of days, this isn't a program, this isn't a process, this is how we do things, this is how we live. Our program is not a restorative justice program, our program is based on the customary laws of main law people here in Atlantic Canada and our program is the customary law program. Because this is the way we live, this is the way we are expected to behave and treat each other within our communities and outside of our communities. So with that I hear a lot of words of new way and let's move forward and new approach. It ain't that new. I've been doing this for 20 over, I want to say how many years, but over 20 years and I'm new at this, but it's been around for a really long time and what we need to do as people here in Canada is to try to bring those principles of sharing and respect and the things that we've had and that are intrinsic to humanity I believe in the business that we do every day, not just in our practice of employment or our chosen careers, but also in ways that we do with each other. Thank you.