Tour audio Rehabilitation

While the Archambault Commission Report of 1938 advocated a shift from retributive to rehabilitative justice, subsequent reports in the 1960s and 1970s found that prisons were still lacking in programming and in their general capacity to “rehabilitate” prisoners. Here, the cultural identity and pride instilled by the Native Brotherhood is contrasted against the hopelessness and dehumanization of incarceration.

Call to Action #35 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is for the eliminat[ion of] barriers to the creation of additional Aboriginal healing lodges within the federal correctional system,” while Call #31 is for the provi[sion of] sufficient and stable funding to implement and evaluate community sanctions that will provide realistic alternatives to imprisonment for Aboriginal offenders and respond to the underlying causes of offending.” In his final report before resigning from his position as Canada’s Correctional Investigator, Ivan Zinger notes: “As this Office has called for previously and repeatedly, a broader decolonization of the prison system and a transfer of care to Indigenous, community-based organizations and individuals, is what is needed to make meaningful and lasting change.” 

Read by Thomas Maxie