Topic: Indigeneity and Restorative Justice: The Prison Industrial Complex

Catalog description

This course will introduce students to the process of Restorative Justice, by focusing on how restorative justice operates within indigenous communities, with a focus on kānaka maoli (Native Hawaiians). As this course takes a comparative approach to examining the fields of Restorative Justice, Indigenous Studies, and the Prison Industrial Complex, some of the other communities we will look at are local communities in South Africa, those behind the concertina wire, and an activist group of Latina/x women bicycle brigade in East Los Angeles. In the course, Restorative justice is explored as a resolution to the enduring legacy of colonialism via two frames: the political and criminal justice. In addition to the focus on Restorative Justice as a praxis in the field of Peace and Justice Studies, this course is designed to introduce students to the field of Indigenous Studies, which is NOT so much a study of Indigenous peoples and cultures, as a study with and by I indigenous peoples and cultures. Using film, literature, and scholarship, this interdisciplinary course aims to overturn dominant constructions of history in order to explore contemporary issues of Indigenous cultural identity, representation, sovereignty, and legal frameworks. This course is thus designed to give students an exploratory venture into the many theories and applications of restorative justice, indigenous studies and m ass incarceration.