Boulder (Colo.) Meeting allocates $300 a year to the Indigenous Peacemaking Initiative, a program of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), which provides legal assistance to Native American tribes, organizations, and individuals nationwide, and is based in Boulder.
Quaker values such as seeking nonviolent resolutions to conflicts motivate meeting members to contribute to the organization, according to Jane Westberg, co-convener of the meeting’s Indigenous Peoples Concerns Committee.
“It certainly is in line with our peace testimony so it’s easy to say yes,” Westberg said.
Boulder Meeting has donated money to the Indigenous Peacemaking Initiative (IPI) program since 2017. The financial support is part of a broader relationship between the meeting and NARF, according to Paula Palmer, co-director of Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples, a program of Friends Peace Teams that initially started at Boulder Meeting, where Palmer is a member. The meeting has been donating to NARF since before 2017; meeting members frequently attend NARF events, and NARF attorneys often offer lectures at the meetinghouse.
Indigenous conflict resolution methods embrace collaboration and do not emphasize individual rights as much as mainstream courts in the United States do, explained Brett Lee Shelton (Oceti Sakowin Oyate, enrolled in the Oglala Sioux Tribe), senior staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund. Native societies promote “respect, responsibility, reciprocity, and relationships,” Shelton said. Traditional dispute resolution takes a holistic approach.
“It’s not just about resolving the issue and more about resolving the relationship that led to the issue,” Shelton said.
The Indigenous Peacemaking Initiative aims to continue or revive historic Indigenous peacemaking methods, according to the IPI website. The program uses circle processes involving parties to a conflict, allies of the conflict parties, and relevant community members. The circle process is intended to generate understanding of the conflict and determine healing steps to resolve the dispute and prevent future problems.
Priorities include distributing materials from tribal peacemaking efforts, offering technical assistance, training tribe members in Indigenous peacemaking techniques, and advocating for tribal peacemaking.
Practices of restorative justice used in U.S. schools stem from Indigenous peacemaking practices, according to Shelton. Restorative justice acknowledges reliance on Indigenous peacemaking approaches. In Indigenous communities, people resolve disputes by gathering the parties to the dispute in a circle and inviting individuals to speak one at a time when holding a talking piece, Shelton explained. He noted that Indigenous processes exist around the world.
Shelton explained that non-Natives should not just seek to imitate the practices of Indigenous communities as this could amount to cultural appropriation. For example, he advised against non-Indigenous people using feathers as talking pieces because they don’t have the same cultural significance outside of Native communities.
Indigenous peacemaking initiatives differ from alternative dispute resolution, which is a broad category encompassing a variety of non-court processes, Shelton noted.
Friends on the Indigenous Peoples Concerns Committee became acquainted with NARF through community programs. Shelton participated in a presentation of the committee’s “Roots of Injustice, Seeds of Change: Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples” and advised on improvements to that workshop. Palmer got to know Shelton better at meetings about Indigenous boarding schools.
“In 2014, Brett invited me to meet with him and Don Wharton, the NARF staff attorneys who were working on Indian boarding schools. They told me they were trying, without very much success so far, to persuade the churches to take responsibility for doing research on their own church-operated Indian boarding schools. When I asked whether Quakers had been involved, they said yes, Quakers had definitely collaborated with the federal government’s policy of forced assimilation of Native children. They encouraged me to undertake research on the Quaker Indian boarding schools, and they even provided some funding for my visits to the sites of the Quaker schools in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Iowa,” Palmer said.
Shelton told Palmer about the Indigenous Peacemaking Initiative, and she shared the information with the Indigenous Peoples Concerns Committee. At a meeting for worship for business in 2017, Friends supported continuing a relationship between Boulder Meeting and NARF, particularly uniting around the IPI, according to Palmer.
The meeting has also financially supported other Indigenous-led groups, including Isna Wica Owayawa Loneman School (Pine Ridge), Youth Healing Camps (Pine Ridge), the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, Southern Arapaho Language Program, and Right Relationship Boulder.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Boulder Meeting has donated to NARF since 2017; rather it is NARF’s Indigenous Peacemaking Initiative program specifically that the meeting has donated to since 2017. The meeting has been donating to NARF since before 2017.
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