RETRIBUTIVE VS RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
What are the varying levels at which truth and reconciliation must take place?
Nuremberg is a formalist legalistic approach. And it is critical. Institutions and formal power must respond to injustice and rectify processes, laws, institutions, regimes, etc.
But beyond that, there is a social reconciliation, cultural reconciliation and human reconciliation process that must happen underneath those structures and forms of power if full and true human healing is to happen.
What are our possibilities for the future?
RECONCILIATION + MEMORY
Storytime (abridged version)
by Shelley Barry, WEAVE
We will write
Gather stories unto ourselves
And breathe them out
We will write
For our ancestors
For unborn children
For I and I
We will write
When all we have
Are words
[…]
We are writing the sounds
Of our lives
The smell of our Africa
We are slaves mothers sisters queens
Friends comrades lovers
We pound unbeaten drums
We carve our words on the cave walls of time
We write ourselves into history
[…]
For here begins
Our once upon a time
CULTURAL ABORIGILAN GENOCIDE
Additional Resources:
Dialogue for peace and reconciliation in Rwanda
The Forgiveness Project in South Afrika
Rwanda & South Africa: a long road from truth to reconciliation
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its report yesterday here in Canada.
"Words are not enough," Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the commission said, to address the "cultural genocide" of residential schools on aboriginal communities.
Joining Shad to talk about the TRC's findings are three leaders in the Aboriginal arts community, through the lens of culture:
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Jesse Wente is a culture commentator and Director of Film Programmes at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
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Tara Beagan is a playwright, performer, artist and director
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Musician Ian Campeau, also known as DJ NDN from A Tribe Called Red.
Our panelists share their reactions to the the TRC's findings released this week, and discuss the arts' important role in educating and sharing stories that not everyone may have encountered through traditional educators.
"For the majority of indigenous artists, we are politicised by our very existence.
Residential schools were meant to wipe us out," says Wente, who also pointed out that the history of residential schools has been touched upon very rarely in film.
"The fact that we exist, persist, and continue to make indigenous art is in itself a political act, and in a way a resistance against the legacy of residential schools."
GENOCIDE - THE AFTERMATH
GUAVA JUICE
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shake shake my comrade
shake that invention of the working class
shake that unifying medicine before it's too late
shake before the time come to pass
shake that guava juice
throw throw qabane
throw that liquid of capitalist invention
throw the blood of Ntsikane
throw before they see your intention
throw that guava juice
dance dance my hero
dance around the fire of resistance
dance at the success of your throw
dance because the dogs are still at a distance
dance for that guava juice
make make my young lion
make another guava juice
make another one as strong as iron
make many more until they beg for a truce
make those many guava juices
beg, beg you bastard
beg that your filthy skin be spared
beg that your blood does not flood
beg because we have many guava juices stored
beg those little dangerous guava juices