A Restorative Approach to Family Violence: Feminist Kin-Making 2022000398, 2022000399, 9780367612665, 9780367615253, 9781003105374

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Routledge Frontiers of Criminal Justice

A RESTORATIVE APPROACH TO FAMILY VIOLENCE FEMINIST KIN-MAKING Joan Pennell

“This important and beautifully written book narrates a history of brave innovation confronting family violence at its roots in Newfoundland and Labrador. It empowered First Peoples and First Nations to innovate in ways that allow us all to learn from their wisdom, and from histories of our colonial suppression of that wisdom. Evocative theoretical themes include feminist kin-making that moves patriarchal family structures from taking to tending. Joan Pennell draws upon deep wells of feminist activism in the shelter movement. She is an inspiring visionary, returning social work to its Hull House origins of doing with, away from doing for, from doing to.” John Braithwaite, University of Maryland and Australian National University; Distinguished Professor Emeritus, School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) “A Restorative Approach to Family Violence: Feminist Kin-Making provides strong evidence for how, among other things, resetting externally imposed cultural narratives and re-centering the value of kinship ties are necessary steps towards addressing family violence. These steps may potentially change how child welfare systems engage with communities in which solutions can most effectively be found within their cultural roots.” Kwesi Brookins, Professor of Psychology and Africana Studies, North Carolina State University; Director, Center for Family and Community Engagement “In this fantastic book, Professor Joan Pennell offers an exciting theoretical re-framing of the well-known Newfoundland and Labrador FGDM project led by Professor Gale Burford and her in the 1990s. The passage of time allows the author to reflect back and to add rich, multi-dimensional and state-of-the-art layers of theory to the program, which was ahead of its time when implemented. The book is a “Must read” for anyone working in the field of family violence, child protection and restorative justice: The “mother” of family group decision making re-organizes the building blocks of the project’s long-lasting success, and constructs a new framework that combines feminist, intergenerational, relational, cultural-sensitive and regulatory theories together. With this new framework, the strengths of the restorative justice approach become even more apparent; the development of new programs becomes more structured; and the evaluation of operating programs can be far more robust.” Tali Gal, Head, School of Criminology, University of Haifa, Israel

“In this valuable and timely book, Joan Pennell persuasively addresses one of the dilemmas confronting the modern development and application of restorative practices—family violence. Among RJ practitioners, the application of restorative values, principles, and practices to family violence has been thought to be very risky. It was feared that it might result in revictimization by those responsible due to power imbalances, subtle communication cues, and later retaliation. Based on an early demonstration project by Gale Burford and Joan, this book demonstrates that while careful preparation and coordination are necessary to decrease the odds of additional harm, Family Group Decision Making rooted in restorative practices may be uniquely suited to help families heal the harms, change attitudes and behaviors, and allow respectful relationships to be reestablished.” Michael J. Gilbert, Professor Emeritus of Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio; Executive Director, National Association of Community and Restorative Justice “This important book is written by one of the key developers of our practice and thinking around restorative approaches to family violence. It draws on both contemporary research and the author’s reflections on the trail-blazing use of restorative approaches in Canada in the 1990s. Characteristically, the book does not duck the challenges of family violence but is founded in a feminist kinship approach that carries hope and belief in families’ and communities’ abilities to address it, with the right support. The book also brings an important focus on the centrality of narratives to this work—the importance of questioning narratives which create stereotypes that disempower families and communities, and the revolutionary power of personal narratives as a means of grasping agency and making meaning from experience.” Robin Sen, Lecturer, Social Work, University of Edinburgh, Scotland; Editor, Practice: Social Work in Action

A Restorative Approach to Family Violence

A Restorative Approach to Family Violence looks back at an early and successful demonstration of a family and culturally based model to stop severe family violence. This conferencing model, called family group decision making, was applied by three diverse Canadian communities—Inuit, rural, and urban—to the benefit of child and adult family members. Narrative inquiry identifies how engaging the family and relatives resets the narrative from misrecognition to recognition of their competence and caring. Family violence poses some of the most long-term and controversial questions in restorative justice. Should we use a restorative approach to stop gendered and intergenerational harm? Or will bringing together those who have been harmed, those causing harm, and their supporters only incite more violence? Underlying these questions is a profound distrust of families and their cultural networks. This distrust has stalled turning away from carceral interventions that particularly harm minoritized communities. Moving forward in time, the volume identifies blocks to trusting families and their cultural networks and means of circumventing these blocks. The book offers a theory of feminist kin-making to comprehend the restorative process and gives practical guidance to restorative participants, practitioners, policy makers, and researchers. Joan Pennell is Professor Emerita of Social Work and founding director of the Center for Family and Community Engagement at North Carolina State University. Before her return to the United States, she was principal investigator (with Dr. Gale Burford) of the Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, demonstration of family group decision making in situations of child maltreatment and domestic violence. In the US, she has conducted research on family group conferencing and other forms of engaging families in decision-making. She has a long-term commitment to the movements for gender, racial, and economic justice.

Routledge Frontiers of Criminal Justice

The Impact of Covid-19 on Prison Conditions and Penal Policy Edited by Frieder Dünkel, Stefan Harrendorf and Dirk van Zyl Smit The Virtual Reality of Imprisonment in Russia “Preparing myself for Prison” in a Contested Human Rights Landscape Laura Piacentini and Elena Katz Life Without Parole Worse than Death? Ross Kleinstuber, Jeremiah Coldsmith, Margaret E. Leigey and Sandra Joy Penal Responses to Serious Offending by Children Principles, Practice and Global Perspectives Nessa Lynch, Yannick van den Brink and Louise Forde A Restorative Approach to Family Violence Feminist Kin-Making Joan Pennell Interviewing of Suspects with Mental Health Conditions and Disorders in England and Wales A Paradigm Shift Laura Farrugia Convictions Without Truth The Incompatibility of Science and Law Robert Schehr For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Frontiers-of-Criminal-Justice/book-series/RFCJ

A Restorative Approach to Family Violence

Feminist Kin-Making

Joan Pennell

First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Taylor & Francis The right of Joan Pennell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pennell, Joan, 1949- author. Title: A restorative approach to family violence : feminist kin-making / Joan Pennell. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Routledge frontiers of criminal justice | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022000398 (print) | LCCN 2022000399 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367612665 (hbk) | ISBN 9780367615253 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003105374 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Family violence. | Family violence--Prevention. Classification: LCC HV6626 .P453 2023 (print) | LCC HV6626 (ebook) | DDC 362.82/92--dc23/eng/20220121 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022000398 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022000399 ISBN: 978-0-367-61266-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-61525-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-10537-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003105374 Typeset in Bembo by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

To My Family Group I dedicate this book to my family, friends, and all those with whom I have made, am making, and will make kinship.

Contents

Foreword from Labrador Foreword from Newfoundland Preface Project Materials Abbreviations

1 A Restorative Approach—Narrative Threads Defamiliarizing family violence 1 Feminist action against family violence 2 An unexpected conclusion 3 Feminist kin-making 4 From resemblance to affinity 4 An imposed ethic of care 5 From taking to tending 5 A restorative approach and family violence 6 Culturally responsive 6 Multiplying benefits 7 Instigating change 8 Western restorative traditions 8 Gendered shaming 8 Movements to colorize restorative justice 9 Growing openness 10 Resistance to White supremacy 10 Accountability for racial justice 11 Endogenous-exogenous solutions 12 Learnings 13 Cultural practice and rights 13 A family group or the family group 13 Recognition without the necessary power and means 14

xiv xvi xviii xxi xxii

1

x Contents

Communicating relatedness and belonging 15 Rights and family violence 16 Reconfiguring old partnerships 17 Restorative justice and responsive regulation 18 A disconnect between family-based approaches and restorative justice 18 Liberatory framework 19 Anti-carceral feminism 20 Building trust in government 21 Legitimate regulation 22 Remarkably suited 23 Most severe test? 23 Serious, frequent, violent, and personal 23 And familial 24 Shifting masculinities 24 Lessening stress, gaining confidence 25 From misrecognition to recognition 25 Catalyst for change 26 Threads and contradictory tensions 26 Narrative thread 1: Restoring family and cultural leadership 26 Narrative thread 2: Storytelling for hope and recovery 27 Narrative thread 3: Regulating responsively the healing process 27 Narrative thread 4: Cascading trust and nonviolence 28 The relevance of location 29 Notes 30 References 32

2 FGDM Example—A Newfoundland Story Cultural storytelling for liberatory transformation 43 White settler-narrated magic tales 43 Working-class resistance 44 Domestic struggles 44 Tales of transformation 45 The FGDM lead-up 46 Another angle 47 Restoring family and cultural leadership 48 Sarah’s determination 48 Two sides at odds with each other 48 Appealing to both sides of the family 49 Supports for those harmed 49 Orienting service providers 50

43

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Parole’s uncertainties, George’s alarm 50 Nourishing homegrown leadership 50 Storytelling for hope and recovery 52 Weighted toward family and women 52 Leveling the field 53 Professional accounts 53 Fathers and sons 54 Magnifying suppressed perspectives 54 Regulating responsively the healing process 55 A mix of systems 56 Informal connecting 56 Getting behind sensible ideas 56 Hybridizing governance 57 Cascading trust and nonviolence 59 Out of contact 59 Doing well 59 Smartening up 59 Critical impact, new directions 59 Some further questions 61 Notes 62 References 63

3 FGDM Project Planning—Local Organizing, Emergent Responsive Regulation At home 65 Shaped by cultural context 66 National feminist contentions 66 Community decision 67 Port au Port Peninsula 68 Local organizing: Helping out 68 Economic changes and the status of women 68 Local management of visits 69 Helping out and family violence 70 Nain 70 Local organizing: Inuit-specific, Inuit women led 70 Healing each other 71 Our beautiful land 72 Land as healer 73 Multilayered consensual decision to participate 73 St. John’s 74

65

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Local organizing: State engagement 74 Women’s precarity 75 Bridging 76 Expanding project discussions  77 Joint funding and resourcing 77 Family Violence Initiative 77 Resourcing family costs 78 Rapid start-up 79 Community leadership, emergent responsive regulation 80 Notes 81 References 82

4 FGDM Conferencing—Resetting Narrative, Revitalizing Culture

87

That family 87 Lowering barriers 87 The agency of narratives 88 Narrative inquiry 89 Project assumptions 89 Embedding project assumptions 90 Conferencing resets 90 Conference implementation 90 Taking responsibility versus responsibilization 91 Families making decisions 91 Conference outcomes 92 Backed by child welfare assessments 94 Getting unstuck 97 Cultural revival 97 Mi’kmaw revival in Western NL 99 Mi’kmaw Family & Children’s Services of Nova Scotia, Canada 99 Wikimanej Kikmanaq—Family circles as an authentic experience for Mi’kmaw families 101 Notes 107 References 108

5 Concluding Possibilities—Cascading Trust in Families and Cultural Networks Restorative making-with 112 Storylines of feminist kin-making 113

112

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No binary answer 113 Hybrid of allies 114 Turning to families and culture 114 Wanting FGC for own family 114 Messages of caution and hope 115 Don’t assume costs are always the issue for government 115 Beware of risk aversion and slippage into familiar paradigms 116 Check which system is making the most referrals to a program 117 Consider the impact of the type of legislation on delivering conferences 118 Keep programs closely tied to cultural networks and local communities 118 Attend to the needs of all family members 119 Be mindful of the workers 119 Doing the deep work with the feminist community 120 Establishing restorative jurisdictions 120 Creating international learning communities for researchers 121 Cascading trust in families and cultural networks 121 Notes 122 References 122

Index

125

Foreword from Labrador

Family Group Decision Making: Past Benefits and Current Needs Fran Williams1 and Richard Leo2 August 19, 2019 Nain, Labrador “FGDM was a way for families to open up about their problems.” – Fran Williams “FGDM is needed all the more for family connections today.” – Richard Leo When you contacted us about taking part in the Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) Project, it was an opportune time for this discussion. In the early 1990s, we knew our families and community, people visited each other, we didn’t have the internet, and our elders kept on top of what was happening in families. You said what FGDM was, and we knew what was expected of us. The Project offered something that we did not have from our government or in the Labrador Inuit Association at the time. We were happy to have a way for families to come together and open up about the kinds of problems they were having. The Project made it possible for families to really talk without fear of being reprimanded. The video filmed in

1 Fran Williams was the Director of the OkâlaKatigêt Society, a member of the FGDM Advisory Council in Nain, and directed the filming of Saputjinik on site in Nain. 2 Richard Leo was an addictions counselor at the Labrador Inuit Health Commission, presented at FGDM conferences, acted in Saputjinik, and has worked with Family Connections, Health and Social Development with Nunatsiavut, the regional Inuit government in Labrador.

Foreword from Labrador  xv

Nain, Saputjinik,3 showed what the Project was all about for our families and culture. Today, FGDM is needed all the more. Since the Project, Nain had quadrupled in size, we don’t have enough houses or jobs in the community. People are busy with their lives, go off to their cabins, and don’t speak with each other like they did before. There is a lot of drug selling and bootlegging now; drugs are so available. Our elders are gone; they are moving to Hopedale to be with family or Goose Bay to a facility. We don’t trust our elders like we used to. We are losing our language. Fewer and fewer people take part in community planning such as on suicide. The Nunasiavut government is focusing on jobs and not putting enough emphasis on culture and language. More and more women or both parents are working. It is hard to get certified babysitters because government delays payments by two months. Many, many children are being taken from their parents and sent to the [Newfoundland] Island. It is difficult for children to be away from their culture. In Nain and on the coast, we have the Family Connections program that offers counseling, family visitation, and other supports to families. What we also need is FGDM. It is useful to have families who are experiencing the problems to talk openly. They are sometimes afraid to do this. Families can improve the situation they are in if they really talked without fear. FGDM would give them the opportunity to open up more. We could show the video Saputjinik to show how families can share their problems. This is a way for us to start to care for each other more.

3  Saputjinik (Healing each other): An Inuit family deals with domestic violence (1999). Video prepared by the Centre for Academic & Media Services, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the OkâlaKatigêt Society, Nain, Labrador, Canada, and produced by G. Burford & J. Pennell. [English and Inuktitut versions, Distributed to Circumpolar Communities] Available at https://linney.mun.ca/pages/view.php?ref=40449&k=

Foreword from Newfoundland

Thomas G. Mills4 Former Director of Public Prosecutions Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada August 14, 2019 Any good prosecutor quickly realizes that the long-term resolution to criminal cases can seldom be resolved by the courts alone. Nowhere is this more true than with matters directly impacting upon families. In such cases, the criminal justice system will have to play a key role, but the impacted families themselves possess, or have insight into, solutions that can result in a more effective and lasting resolution. Yet despite such knowledge those families may be lacking in the means and resources to bring about the necessary changes. I was drawn to this project by the possibility that families could be supported by the larger, more formal community to assist in realizing the changes that might prevent a reoccurrence of criminal acts. Vigorous oversight and high academic standards alleviated my concerns about possible negative impact upon vulnerable family members. The Newfoundland and Labrador Family Group Decision Making Project provided a unique opportunity for professionals from different fields to come together and work with families who were in need of assistance by recognizing the inherent wisdom of the families themselves. The project did not replace the criminal justice system but rather allowed for different and

4 Thomas Mills provided legal coordination and guidance to the Family Group Decision Making Project. He served on the project’s Provincial Protocol Committee and strategically figured out ways to safeguard the confidentiality of the family groups’ deliberations. Tom was born and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and offered consultation on Chapter 2 regarding Newfoundland culture.

Foreword from Newfoundland  xvii

more intimate insights into prevention. The professional, whether lawyer, police officer, judge, professor, or social worker, was not usurped. Instead, all resources were given an opportunity to work together. The work done in Newfoundland and Labrador demonstrates that there are ways to empower families, no matter how families are defined, to be decision makers and not just witnesses to their own lives.

Preface

Gale Burford and I had talked for years about writing this book on the Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) Project that took place 30 years ago in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. When Gale opted out of authoring the volume, he gave me his “blessing” to continue on. All our work since the FGDM Project confirmed that this was an account worth telling—it would record what was learned about a restorative approach to situations of serious family violence and would offer messages of caution and hope for our quite troubled times. These messages are all the more crucial in a world faced with huge inequity, environmental destruction, and massive forced migrations, including most recently from Ukraine. Besides, our (and so many others’) mentor John Braithwaite kept sending nudges to get on with it, nudges felt all the way from Australia to North America. Before starting on the book, Gale and I checked first with leadership of the FGDM Project. Again, we heard that FGDM was a story worth telling. Their perceptions of FGDM can be found in the two forewords. The first from Labrador is by Fran Williams and Richard Leo, who lived in Nain and provided such strong leadership from this Inuit-and-settler community. The second foreword from Newfoundland was by Tom Mills, who lived in St. John’s and strategically figured out the legalities of a model, not previously applied in the province or, for that matter, in the country. This preface does not attempt to acknowledge all the many people in the community, government, and university who lent their support during the project. Their names can be found in the acknowledgments of the project’s implementation and outcome reports, available online. Instead, here I recognize those who served as my guides in writing the volume. Ellen Boyne at Routledge Press immediately voiced interest in the volume, and she has been so helpful in answering my numerous questions. Kate Taylor and Riya Bhattacharya ensured the book moved through all the stages to printing. The three reviewers of the prospectus gave quite helpful suggestions on how to strengthen the plan for the book. The Mi’kmaq in Nova Scotia developed their own Indigenous model of calling on families and communities in support of their children and families.

Preface xix

I was grateful that Kristen Basque readily accepted my invitation to write about their work and that Lenora Paul and Arlene Johnson at the Mi’kmaw Family & Children’s Services of Nova Scotia supported publishing this overview. Their hard and creative accomplishments truly merit hearing. Given the time lapse since the project and my no longer residing in Newfoundland, I had some difficulty locating key resources on the project. So naturally, I turned to old friends, now retired, two librarians and one political scientist from Memorial University in the province—Dick Ellis, Karen Lippold, and Steve Wolinetz—who were undeterred by the challenges. Their sleuthing skills are unparalleled. In writing the book, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with friends internationally and making new ones. We chatted and exchanged ideas, and their insights, words (with permission), and cited publications can be found over this entire volume. I know that many, many others contributed to the volume that I have not mentioned in this preface. My apologies. John Braithwaite, Gale Burford, and Tali Gal closely read the first chapter so that I could set off on the right foot from the start, with additional insights from Mary Koss and enthusiastic endorsement from Anna Rockhill. Tom Mills, born and raised in St. John’s, helped me navigate the application of the magic tales of Newfoundland to a family’s experience of FGDM. He brought in folklorist Diane Goldstein and his own brother Steve for assistance. Not surprisingly, former FGDM coordinators, Stella Campbell and Susan MacLeod, served as reminders of the meaning of conferencing and alerted me to current developments in the province that touch on a family-and-communitybased approach. Helping me place the project in the feminist thinking at the time of the project and afterwards were reflections by Cheryl Hebert. Requiring the greatest outreach to the international community was the final chapter that identifies possibilities for moving forward a restorative approach to family violence. The networking was evident in Robin Sen’s connecting me to Mary Mitchell and Abyd Quinn-Aziz, and we had a lively, four-way, online discussion of conferencing in England, Scotland, and Wales. Very thoughtful ideas on the importance of solid but flexible training were offered by Sharon Inglis in England and Leslie Tomatuk in Quebec. Jennifer Llewellyn, in Nova Scotia, and I had a long conversation about the vital importance of international learning communities for a restorative approach, such as I was doing in one small way with the benefit of zoom. These conversations would have been sorely lacking without input from Paul Nixon, who has been a long-term companion in understanding and promoting good practice of family group conferencing, first in England and then in New Zealand. There are many others with whom I would have liked to talk, but writing this book needs to draw to an end. My immediate and extended family have been quite patient and supportive, most of all my loving husband Charley, who volunteered to index the book. Charley, a musician and former cataloger,

xx Preface

has indexed numerous books on old time and bluegrass music and was more than willing to take a hand at a restorative approach. This is not a stretch for him: Restorative justice dovetails with Charley’s work with Quaker House, in close proximity to one of the largest military installations in the world and founded on the Friends peace testimony. Joan Pennell Cary, North Carolina, United States March 11, 2022

Project materials

Throughout this book, reference is made to the following three publications of the Family Group Decision Making Project. They are cited by the name at the top.

Manual Burford, G., Pennell, J., & MacLeod, S. (1995, August). Manual for coordinators and communities: The organization and practice of family group decision making (revised). St. John’s, NL, CA: Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work (in English, French, Guatemalan Spanish, Inuktitut, and Spanish). Available at https://go.ncsu. edu/fgdm

Implementation Report Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (1995). Family group decision making: New roles for ‘old’ partners in resolving family violence: Implementation Report (Vols. I–II). St. John’s, NL, CA: Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work. Available at https:// go.ncsu.edu/fgdm

Outcome Report Burford, G., & Pennell, J. (1998). Family group decision making: After the conference—progress in resolving violence and promoting well-being: Outcome Report (Vols. 1–2). St. John’s, NL, CA: Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work. Available at https://go.ncsu.edu/fgdm

Abbreviations

Australia Canada United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women CRC United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child FGC Family Group Conferencing FGDM Family Group Decision Making IPV Intimate Partner Violence LGBTQ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer LIHC Labrador Inuit Health Commission MFCS Mi’kmaw Family and Children’s Services of Nova Scotia NL Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada NZ Aotearoa New Zealand RJ Restorative Justice TJ Transformative Justice UK United Kingdom UNDRIP United Nation’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples US United States of America AU CA CEDAW

Chapter 1

A Restorative Approach— Narrative Threads

Everybody said that they would be there for us if we got into a bind. – Jerome, partner of Tiffany, one month after the conference I got married. Went back to work. Everyone’s healthy…. Jerome and I are doing fine. – Tiffany, now wife of Jerome, one year after the conference. (Pennell, 2005c, p. 171)

Defamiliarizing family violence Jerome and Tiffany, from a rural community in the US state of North Carolina, had repeatedly and violently attacked each other. Most recently Jerome was seen at the emergency ward for injuries inflicted by Tiffany. At this point, child welfare placed their three young children with relatives and referred the family to a restorative approach to figure out where the children should live in the long term. The restorative conference went well beyond this agency mandate and took up the challenge of helping the couple live together without violence and keep their family safe and healthy. A year later, according to Tiffany, the conference succeeded in achieving this enlarged mandate. At the conference were both sides of the family, all African American, and service providers who were a mix of African American and White1 and agency and community based. Jerome had his mental health counselor in attendance, and Tiffany had a women’s advocate present. This meant that the parents would not alone face the child protection worker who had removed the children from the home. Instead, the couple would be surrounded by their relatives and community supports. Nor would the child welfare2 agency alone have the weight of determining the course of action. This hybrid of family, community, and state combined to create a plan that all could get behind. DOI: 10.4324/9781003105374-1

2  A Restorative Approach

Following through on the conference plan, child welfare returned the children to the parents, and the extended family stuck close by the couple—supporting and checking on them and making sure the children got to school—in Jerome’s word, before they got into “a bind.” His mother observed, “The conference made a difference…. Sometimes Tiffany would try to start something, but Jerome walks away and ignores her” (Pennell, 2005c, p. 171). With the encouragement of their kin and supportive services, the couple changed how they related to each other. No longer assuming that family violence would be a part of their lives, they could walk away from the violence, regain employment, and create a loving home in which their children could thrive. The restorative approach offered a way for a family, struggling with family violence, to redefine their family. They defamiliarized, that is, “making strange, and pushing aside” (Buchanan, 2018), family violence, no longer taken for granted as just what happens in the household. Stepping away from habitual responses to violence, they could choose how to relate as a family.3 The question, though, remains as to why child welfare thought it necessary to take the three children away from their parents’ care in the first place. Within a racist society, Black families are far more likely than White families to live in poverty and in areas with scarce employment opportunities, circumstances falsely equated with child neglect, and their children are placed under state supervision even when the risk of future harm is lower than for White children (Dettlaff, 2021; Raz, 2020). Beyond defamiliarizing family violence in the home, the conference defamiliarized the child welfare agency’s misperception of this African American couple. Over the conference, child welfare came to see Tiffany and Jerome as caring parents in need of support, which they could find within their strong kinship network and local community. Defamiliarization moved state authorities from misrecognition to recognition of Jerome and Tiffany’s true capacities for caring (Schalk, 2018; Storey, 2019). Feminist action against family violence This book deliberately uses the term family violence because the concern is with the totality of harm committed within and against cultural networks (Nancarrow, 2010). To be effective, defamiliarizing family violence needs to occur in people’s daily lives alongside identifying how state, corporate, religious, and civil institutions perpetuate the violence. The assumption is that no one in a family is safe unless everyone is and that family relationships are distorted by social and economic pressure and exploitation of minoritized populations. In this book, additional terms besides family violence are incorporated when attention is directed specifically to violation of intimate partners, children, older adults, and others considered family members. All these are

A Restorative Approach  3

manifestations of the societally enforced patterns of abuse that viciously circulate among the family group as men assault women and children, and boys then assault their mothers and sisters. Mothers are at the center of the gender-­ imposed norms about family, and these norms distribute violence predominantly against women and girls, though not always as in the example at the outset of this chapter. Overturning family violence is framed as feminist to remain firmly footed in the vision, analyses, strategies, and hard-won gains of women’s movements from different cultures and countries while expanding the participants beyond women’s organizations (Basu, 2017). To safeguard its emancipatory aims, the restorative work needs to be carried out in conjunction with so many other social movements, including those advancing racial, immigrant, Indigenous, sexual/gender, economic, and environmental justice.

An unexpected conclusion My work with a restorative approach to family violence, first in Canada and then in the US and other national jurisdictions, led to an unexpected conclusion, and for this reason, the book starts at the end and then recounts how this conclusion was reached. Given the numerous and different aspects of a restorative approach, this and later chapters unwind multiple narrative threads or story lines that inform the conclusion. Contrary to my initial supposition and those of so many around me, I learned that A restorative approach is remarkably suited to upending family violence. In the early 1990s, this conclusion was decidedly not my position when launching a restorative approach in Canada to stop violation of both adults and children in the home (Pennell & Burford, 1995). A restorative approach appealed to me because it set in motion a participatory process by which families and their supporters might resolve harm within the home. At the same time, I assumed that applying a restorative approach to gendered and intergenerational violation would be one of the most difficult tests of a restorative approach. I remember envisioning my undertaking a restorative approach to family violence as a “leap of faith.” The springboard was my own background growing up as a Quaker,4 with beliefs in peace, the equality of all, and discernment through coming together in an unity of spirit. I shared the concerns of many women’s advocates that bringing together families and their cultural networks to find solutions to violence in their homes might only fortify the power of those committing the abuse and further endanger those who were abused.5 Would the meetings serve as another venue for violence, manipulation, and coercion; intimidate and silence those who were abused; and lead to retaliation afterwards not only against those

4  A Restorative Approach

who had been abused but against those who had abused or any family member, friend, or close contact? These quite justifiable misgivings were evident in the host of safety measures that were put in place and in the design of the evaluation that closely monitored the impact from the perspectives of different family members, their informal networks, community supports, and service agencies. On returning to the US from Canada, I initiated a project on conferencing in North Carolina.6 By this point, I was more confident about the approach in situations of family violence, though still ensuring safeguards were in place. As documented over this volume, the Canadian and North Carolina projects as well as other work confirmed for the most part the same conclusion: The approach cultivates the capacity of families within their wider networks to grow • • • •

Agency, through members of all generations and genders exerting control over their personal lives and affairs as a family and cultural group; Responsibility, through taking personal and collective action for safe homes and communities; Caring, through receiving and giving emotional, ideational, material, and spiritual supports; and Recognition, through acknowledgment as belonging to a family, culture, and place, worthy of respect.

Feminist kin-making The work over 30 years leads to a feminist theory of change to explain the unexpected conclusion: A restorative approach overturns intergenerational and gendered violation by making kinship. An immediate caveat, making kinship in the context of family violence necessitates unmaking, remaking, and freshly making relationships. Reconfiguring relationships does not erase that families are historically situated and culturally bounded. What feminist kin-making does is to defamiliarize family violence and misperceptions of families and their cultural networks and frees energy and good will for wider change that flips gendered and intergenerational patterns of abuse to relationships of caring. From resemblance to affinity The theory draws upon the work of Donna Haraway (2016) that to “make kin” (p. 102) is more about liking than likeness. Liking does not deny the power of biological ties while propelling the understanding of kinship beyond

A Restorative Approach  5

genetic composition or predetermined categories of resemblance (such as race and gender). Liking pushes kin-making outward to affinity, kindness, and friendship. Kim Tallbear (2013), an Indigenous7 scholar, challenges us to consider, “Do we value genetic kin versus kin made through law, ceremony, or love?” (p. 526). Pushing aside assumptions that the category of gender must determine family configurations, the Nigerian feminist philosopher Nkiru Uwechia Nzegwu (2006) examined the precolonial structure of families in northwestern Igboland. Refuting the narratives of British colonizers and subsequently those of African males, she found that seniority rather than gender was the organizing principle in this matricentric society in which women might marry other women. The Igbo “dual-sex systems” were “designed to make men and women interdependent” and sustained “women’s autonomy and assertiveness” (Nzegwu, 2006, p. 15). An imposed ethic of care In Westernized societies, family violence divides family members into categories by resemblance (e.g., gender, generation, age, dis(abilities)). These categories interlock and heighten the risk of victimization within social systems that overload caregiving responsibilities on gendered and minoritized populations. To take the example of older women, their financial exploitation at the hands of partners or relatives is prevalent around the globe (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2013), with the extent and reasons varying by setting (Roberto & Hoyt, 2021). In the Republic of Serbia, the transition from a socialist to market economy jeopardized the economic well-being of older women (RadovicMarkovic, 2012), when combined with gendered and ageist expectations. An insightful study of financial exploitation in the Republic of Serbia found that a “strong patriarchal ideology” demanded that older widowed women sign away their financial assets and provide unpaid labor to benefit their children and grandchildren at the expense of their own health, well-being, and rights as citizens (Petrusic, Todorovic, Vracevic, & Jankovic, 2015, p. 17). Undoubtedly, many of these grandmothers cared deeply for their young relatives. This enforced ethic of care, however, with little state safeguards in place, not only ignored aging women’s needs and rights but also their declining caregiving competence as their own health failed (Murphy, 2017). From taking to tending A sense of affinity leads away from “taking” that extracts and exploits, as in the case of the Serbian older women, and toward “tending” that sustains families, cultures, species, and habitats (Turner, 2020, p. 2472). Making kinship across disparate groups raises the question, “Why, or under what conditions,

6  A Restorative Approach

would they care?” (Norton, 2020, p. 6). One answer is a restorative approach, which has been employed thoughtfully to make plans for family members, including older adults (Beck, Lewinson, & Kropf, 2015) and adults with mental health issues (Schout & de Jong, 2021). The restorative process creates affinity among participants as they express their troubles and aspirations, honor their commonalities and distinctions, and adopt a mutually respectful ethic of care. This is a way to generate kinship among the participants and across wider interdependencies, human and nonhuman.

A restorative approach and family violence The theory of feminist kin-making has two interrelated propositions as to why a restorative approach, although not inevitably successful, is well positioned to reverse family violence: 1 A restorative approach is strategic, precisely because families are cultural groupings. Family violence is violation within and against family networks and strikes at the heart of cultural nexuses—motherhood, fatherhood, grandparenthood, and all the other manifestations of familial relationships. These are cultural nodes connecting family across generations, and attacks on family members by other family smash the very foundations of people’s culture. Nonetheless, these nexuses can make kinship by binding together attachments to home and place, obligations of social and material support, commitments to language and beliefs, and remembrance of shared pasts. Disentangling family violence from kinship is crucial if families are to recognize and act upon their mutual responsibilities. 2 A restorative approach puts families and their cultural networks at the center. The approach centers families and their cultural networks as both the site and source of change. Families and their cultural networks, thus, become actors, not passive recipients, and external authorities (e.g., state, corporate, religious, academic) are placed on the circumference. Exogenous systems are then available to assist in ways that families or specific members want. Particularly, in the context of family violence, the wishes of family members may differ from each other, especially at first. Culturally responsive While the restorative aim remains constant to solidify relationships around taking responsible action with others, the specific restorative methods are richly varied to fit the contours of different settings and their cultural requirements for kin-making. For instance, a study in Uganda found that national and state-sanctioned community-based processes of reconciliation showed promise in meeting the needs of domestic violence survivors and

A Restorative Approach  7

their dependent children and changing local norms condoning domestic violence (Polavarapu, 2019). In contrast, a US survey reported that among the three most cited restorative methods for domestic violence, two might bring together those harmed and those committing harm—peacemaking circles and family group conferencing8 (Cissner et al., 2019). Neither had the primary aim of reconciliation and instead focused respectively on normative change and building supports around those harmed (Pennell, Burford, Sasson, Packer, & Smith, 2021). Multiplying benefits In market economies, the benefits of a restorative approach multiply exponentially when state, business, and civil sectors work together to support the interests of families, including and beyond stopping the immediate violence, so that families can flourish economically and socially (Huntington, 2014). Conversely, families suffer when powerful societal sectors impose disparate and conflicting demands on them. For example, on the one hand, child welfare services in the US may expect that mothers stay at home to care for children, and on the other hand, social assistance programs may require that mothers perform unpaid or minimally paid labor outside the home to receive economic support. Underlying these contradictory expectations is a neoliberal ideology of personal responsibility for one’s livelihood and simultaneous demands that impoverished women, especially of color, prove themselves fit mothers (Turgeon, 2018), worthy of any state support (Giles, 2019). Heightened state surveillance through linked databases reinforces the conflicting expectations from child welfare and social assistance (Fong, 2020). This governance of poverty falls heavily on African American families because service providers and community members report Black children at far higher rates than White children to child welfare (Pryce & Yelick, 2021). Poverty, low education, and large families keep women stuck in violent situations, especially in regions with high levels of intimate partner violence (Angaw, Melesse, Geremew, & Tesema, 2021; Larsen, Aye, & Espen, 2021). If instead women acquire even very modest resources relative to their partners, they are individually and collectively enabled to protect themselves and their children from violence ( Jackson, 2016; Leddy et al., 2019). A restorative approach makes it possible for family members to say what they need so that local public agencies, businesses, and nonprofits can help them access the necessary supports for staying together as a family. This may mean the government funding substance use treatment for an adolescent, a dealership offering a car to assist a mother in getting to work, and a fathers’ organization coaching men on engaging with their children (Rollins, 2021).

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Instigating change Social movement coalitions are pivotal in advancing broader goals of change, including changing the legal criminal system. A case in point is the British suffragettes (many of whom had suffered imprisonment) and feminist activists in the early 20th century. Highlighting criminal law injustices against women and their children, they spoke out against the “inequity” of sentences resulting from court trials “composed entirely of men” (Charlotte Despard, cited in Logan, 2008, p. 131) and advocated to end the death sentence, provide aftercare for persons exiting prisons, and replace imprisonment with probation. These activists also redirected attention to meeting the needs of those harmed by crime. A leader in these developments, Margery Fry succeeded (posthumously) in putting in place restitution of those victimized for their losses, whether by the offending parties or the state (Logan, 2017).

Western restorative traditions As Margery Fry (1951) observed, such reparation is a means of restoring those who had been harmed and was an early form of justice in kin-based societies. Reparations in early societies were not limited to restoring victims but also encompassed those committing offenses and the larger community and prevented waging endless blood feuds of retaliation between families. In Europe over the Middle Ages, societies transitioned away from a reparative approach with the development of systems of centralized government; and harm-doing became a crime against the crown or state, with recompense (e.g., hanging, imprisonment, fines) to the government, not to those directly victimized or the community (Gavrielides, 2011). While centralized systems stopped bloodshed, Western governments failed to keep the balance toward reparative processes rather than courtrooms and formal law. In England from the seventh century into the twentieth century, restitutive practices persisted. These included a financial penalty (weregild) paid to those harmed or their surviving relatives, informal agreements to settle disputes, and public apologies to uphold the reputation of those harmed. As Devi-McGleish and Cox (2018) conclude about British law, “Our ‘traditional’ criminal justice system is in fact largely a modern construct” (p. 24). Over time, the United Kingdom (UK) in seeking greater control over the population replaced the actual “traditional” practices of restitution with criminal legal systems mandating judges, juries, trials, and sentencing. Gendered shaming Until the mid-twentieth century, reparation determined by the populace, not the state, lingered in the UK, particularly in rural communities.

A Restorative Approach  9

The holdovers especially pertained to gendered conduct such as scolding or cuckolding (extramarital sex) by women against their husbands. A process called “rough music” shamed the target whose effigy might be paraded through the streets as neighbors beat on pots and pans, followed by burning the effigy (Banks, 2014, p. 62). Over time, public shaming rituals increasingly held husbands to account for wife-beating, but usually the men were selected because they were considered outsiders or from different socioeconomic interest group. Those conducting the shaming often believed that they were enforcing the criminal law rather than taking it into their hands. Rough music and more generally vigilantism by a self-appointed group are a sharp reminder that popular rule can become far more retributive than reparative. Margery Fry envisioned restitution as a component of the formal legal system and, thus, controlled by the state. At the same time, state control over a restorative approach limits families and communities in developing their capacity for self-governance.

Movements to colorize restorative justice The UK shaped the informal justice and legal systems in its colonies, which included four White settler countries, Australia, Canada, New Zealand (NZ), and the US, where the colonists remained rather than returning to their country of origin. For instance, in what became the US, the colonists imported their own folkways on how to order communities, including rough music in Virginia, and adopted the British system of common law (Fischer, 1989) rather than civil law with bureaucratic processes for resolving disputes. As the case with most postcolonial nations of the British empire, the criminal legal systems of the White settler countries were adversarial with evidence determined through cross-examination, an intimidating process for witnesses, especially those who had suffered violence and abuse (Van Camp, 2014). These British informal and formal systems were imposed upon already existing Indigenous practices as well as upon the traditions of diverse immigrants, both voluntary (e.g., settlers) and forced (e.g., slaves, felons). The results were highly inequitable. Today, White settler countries are challenged by Indigenous, Black, and Brown activists to make reparations for historical and current wrongs. These activists are Colorizing Restorative Justice, the title of a book edited by Valandra/Hokšíla (2020). They call out the complacency of White restorative justice (RJ) practitioners who fail to challenge racial injustice and, thus, undermine RJ’s potential to transform society. As White settlers (including myself ) reconnect to their own restorative roots, they may better uphold justice that advances people’s agency, responsibility, caring, and recognition. This volume attends most closely to developments in Australia, Canada, NZ, and the US as well as the UK, the country of origin for the majority of the colonies’ early White settlers. These are nations where I have lived,

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worked, or partnered over the years. This focus, though, as Sámi scholar Rauna Kuokkanen (2019) from Finland observes, narrows the scope of the analysis to Indigenous self-determination movements in these predominantly White settler nations. What Britain and the former White colonies propagate is a global paradigm that Indigenous peoples are the minority within majority White nations. This pushes out of view that most former British colonies have majorities of Indigenous populations but with White people as a powerful minority, such as in South Africa. The result is to leave in place assumptions that ill-serve Indigenous majority nations. The four White settler countries instituted a restorative approach in the context of Indigenous practices, colonial histories of racial and gender oppression, “democratic” institutions excluding non-Whites, and highwealth economies framed within neoliberal principles of business deregulation and individual responsibility. Nevertheless, these nations’ understanding of a restorative approach was extended by the rich mix of immigrants from diverse cultures with traditions of restorative practice based on Confucian, Ubuntu, and many faith traditions (Braithwaite & Zhang, 2017; Hadley, 2006; Wielenga, Batley, & Murambadoro, 2020). The result has been cultural models that are not adapted for a group but instead formed by the group. An example is the National Compadres Network, based in San Jose, California. This national network cultivates the transformational leadership of Latino males to “redevelop the traditional ‘Compadre’ extended family system” to strengthen their families and communities.9

Growing openness Resistance to White supremacy This book was written during a worldwide pandemic. Majority White countries controlled distribution of vaccines and medical supplies, leaving people in majority Black and Brown countries, unable to carry out protective measures.10 The adverse impact of coronavirus infection on communities of color, Indigenous, and migrant was heightened by global crises of persistent gender and sexual violence especially in war zones (United Nations, Security Council, 2021), intensifying economic and health disparity ( Jamieson, Hedges, McKinstry, Koopu, & Venner, 2020), accelerating environmental degradation (Nishime & Hester Williams, 2018), and increasingly authoritarian governments (Lührmann, Medzihorsky, Hindle, & Lindberg, 2020). Decades of right-wing populist movements’ efforts to suppress community interests in public health, science, and democracy broke into the public square in new ways during the single-term presidency of Donald Trump

A Restorative Approach  11

(Dionne, 2020). The threat to democracy was dramatically displayed by the White supremacist insurrection on January 6, 2021, at the US Capitol. Repressive ideologies, in turn, provoked heightened sensibilities to privilege and oppression interlocking with layers of identities—race, ethnicity, gender, class, (dis)ability, sexuality, nationality, and region (Collins, 1986; Mosley et al., 2020; Oluo, 2019). Some identities were particularly salient and consequential as evident in the US by the deaths of Black, Brown, Hispanic, Indigenous, and impoverished people in the custody of increasingly militarized police11 and immigration authorities (Massey, 2020). These deaths sparked widespread protest not only inside but outside the US, mobilized by international emancipatory movements.12 The social upheaval heightened the visibility of long-standing critiques by women of color, immigrants, and Indigenous peoples against carceral and child separation policies, disproportionately perpetuated against their families and communities (INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, 2016; MoretonRobinson, 2020; Shaheen-Hussain, 2020). Accountability for racial justice In response to calls for racial justice, national domestic violence and sexual assault coalitions in the US called themselves “to account for the ways in which this movement, and particularly the white leadership…. failed to listen to Black feminist liberationists and other colleagues of color” (Moment of truth, 2020, p. 1). The coalitions’ declaration, in searching for strategies advancing racial justice, linked to the call by INCITE! (n.d.) for “community accountability, … a process in which a community – a group of friends, a family, a church, a workplace, an apartment complex, a neighborhood, etc – work together to … resist abuse and oppression.” Adopting community-­based solutions was seen as one step to “transform feminism from a movement that maintains the US as a prison nation to one that actively opposes the penal system as racist, neoliberal, uncivilized, and bad for women” (Gruber, 2020, p. 192). Likewise, child welfare services in the US underwent self-reflection about disparities in their treatment of Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous children as compared to White children (Cénat, McIntee, Mukunzi, & Noorishad, 2021) and the resulting surveillance that disrupts not only individual families but the capacity of their neighborhoods to work together and enact their own restorative solutions (Roberts, 2021). Increasingly, child welfare activists, researchers, and educators also spoke against the racist system of monitoring and separating Black families that was erected on a history of slavery. They insisted that states “abolish the current child welfare system and replace it with community-based supports for the care and well-being of children that are designed by and for families and communities” (Dettlaff et al., 2020, p. 510).

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Viewing family violence through the lens of racial justice led to reimagining how to achieve peace in homes. The solutions proposed for domestic violence and child welfare called for family- and community-­ based strategies.

Endogenous-exogenous solutions A fundamental tension persists, though, whether to place confidence in the endogenous solutions that arise from within the family where the violence has taken place and their cultural networks that sustain the family arrangements. Or depend on exogenous interventions imposed by external forces of the state, religious organizations, and broader society, complicit in the violence. It is precisely this tension that the Canadian project faced head-on in collaborating with three diverse communities— Inuit, rural, and urban—in the Atlantic Province of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL). The purpose of the collaboration was to design and test a model for ending family violence. This model was named family group decision making, or FGDM for short. The intent of FGDM was to engage the adults and children in the family as well as their close supporters in making and carrying out decisions to safeguard all family members.13 We were well aware that violence against children and partners commonly occurs in the same family and that altering the conditions sustaining one would likely resolve the other, a view now commonly held (Guedes, Bott, GarciaMoreno, & Colombini, 2016; Sijtsema, Stolz, & Bogaerts, 2020; U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau [USDHHS], 2019; van Berkel, Prevoo, Linting, Pannebakker, & Alink, 2020). As a practice method, FGDM borrowed extensively from the model of family group conferencing (FGC), legislated in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) for their care and protection system (i.e., child welfare).14 FGC entitles the family group—young and adult family members as well as their extended family and for Indigenous peoples, their tribe—to take part in decision making on the care and protection of children and young persons. The NZ model involves endogenous community networks in supporting children and their families within an exogenous formal system of child protection designed to protect children from their parents (Connolly & Katz, 2019). This endogenous/exogenous model can readily decenter the authority of family groups over their young relatives. Government continues to retain authority over significant aspects of the FGC proceedings from inviting participants and convening the conferences to authorizing and funding the family group plans.

A Restorative Approach  13

Learnings While living in Canada, Gale Burford studied and provided training and consultation regularly in the UK throughout the 1980s during the lead-up to their Children Act of 1989. This British act centered the idea that children are best cared for within their own families. Starting in 1989, he was a regular visitor over the following eight years to NZ, teaching and carrying out research during the enactment of the NZ legislation on FGC. The British act and the NZ law both agreed that children belonged with their families, but the two pieces of legislation offered stark contrasts. Going beyond the British act, the NZ law was grounded explicitly on a critique of colonial domination and on a restoratively framed acknowledgment that the deployment of imported social work models, predominantly from the UK and US, were instrumental in the reproduction of racist practices in child welfare. I learned about the enactment of the NZ law from Gale. Returning to Canada from what was the first of his annual visits, Gale conveyed his understanding of FGC and most of all, his enthusiasm for the model including its roots in the Indigenous Māori15 renaissance (Kennedy, 2016). I had recently moved back to Newfoundland from the western prairie province of Manitoba. My receptivity to FGC was heightened by the cultural training that I had received from co-facilitating a group for Indigenous women abused by their partners in Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba.16 I was invited to become involved in the group by an Indigenous social agency that adapted self-government to an urban setting to maintain control over their services and preserve their cultural practices. Sovereignty safeguarded the abused women’s group engaging in spiritual ceremonies and receiving teachings from an Ojibwe woman elder. In this context, the participants remembered their histories, shared their stories, and supported each other’s growth. Over the course of the group, I gained a deeper appreciation of the role of tradition and community in healing for abused women. This learning lent credence to a family-and-culturally-based approach to family violence and prompted my interest in FGC, a model centered on the family group.

Cultural practice and rights A family group or the family group In the deliberations leading up to passage of the 1989 NZ legislation authorizing FGC, the Minister of Social Welfare in 1984 set forth “a presumption in favour of leaving or placing a child in a family group” so as to increase a child’s sense of belonging but of note is that the Minister said and meant “a family group, not the family group” (Hassall, 1996, p. 23). White settler

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presumptions that the state could provide a child in need of care and protection with a family group was forcefully rebutted by a Maori ministerial advisory committee in Puato-te-Atatu (Rangihau, 1986). Such state intervention, as explicated in Puato-te-Atatu, failed to recognize that “indigenous people have particular rights to a particular way of life” and “defeated the maintenance of the Maori way of life” (Rangihau, 1986, p. 18). Within Maori culture, children did not belong solely to their birth parents and instead were “a community responsibility,” and children “had not so much rights, as duties to their elders and community” (p. 75). White settlers substituted “Maori concepts of group control for Western principles of individual rights and impartial treatment” (p. 74). Puato-te-Atatu did not insist that “the old Maori ways should now be restored” but did insist on a “search for a greater sense of family and community involvement and responsibility in the maintenance of law and order” (p. 74). Informing the NZ debates was the United Nations, General Assembly, 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) promulgated in the same year as the NZ act on FGC was passed. Among other rights, the CRC endorsed the “right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including … family relations” (Article 8), which would appear to support children’s attachment to the family group of origin. At the same time, the CRC left open the possibility of state placements outside the home if in the “best interests of the child” (Article 9), which could offer a family group authorized by the government in place of the family group. Contrary to Maori “group control,” the CRC further stipulated that children should be able to express their “views freely” in matters (including child welfare proceedings) affecting themselves (Article 12). What the CRC did not take into account was that for Maori, children belonged not just to their parents but also the entire kin and tribal network. Care of children was a matter of collective responsibility, not individual choice or professional judgment. Recognition without the necessary power and means Puato-te-Atatu led to the FGC legislation that incorporated Maori terms, including whanau for family group and iwi and hapu for tribal units and entitled members of these groupings to take part in their young relatives’ conferences. The act acknowledged the principle that “a child’s or young person’s family, whanau, hapu, iwi, and family group should be supported, assisted, and protected as much as possible; and intervention into family life should be the minimum necessary to ensure a child’s or young person’s safety and protection.” 17 As a Maori woman reflecting on FGC, Catherine Love (2000) concluded the result was a “growing climate of recognition of the important place of whanau, hapu, and iwi in the healthy development of children, young people, and communities” but did not offer the “power and resources” essential

A Restorative Approach  15

to overcoming years of colonization of Maori families (p. 29). Over a decade and a half later, Moyle and Tauri (2016) urged demystifying FGC as a “‘Maori/Indigenous-inspired process’ and instead work with Maori to make it a meaningful, transformative experience…. owned by the communities within which it is practiced” (p. 102). The final chapter of this volume returns to this discussion and presents current developments to advance Maori taking charge of their children and families. Communicating relatedness and belonging Although imperfect in design and implementation, the NZ act opened the way for recognition of the diversity of family groups and their right to practice their own culture, that is, to act out their way of life at the intersections of Indigeneity, race, gender, age, sexuality, dis(ability), and class. In family groups as well as other social groupings, “informal interpersonal communication… furnishes … a way in which people communicate relatedness and set sociocultural boundaries around notions of belonging in particular communities” (Perez & González-Martin, 2018, p. 4). Puato-te-Atatu offered guidance on how to encourage all NZ families to “communicate relatedness” and “belonging” and practice their culture or blend of cultures. Its very first recommendation distilled the essence of cultural acknowledgment in a White settler state with a diverse population: “attack all forms of cultural racism,” “develop a society in which the values of all groups are of central importance,” and “incorporat[e] the values, cultures and beliefs of the Maori people in all policies” (Italics in original, Rangihau, 1986, p. 9). Resisting cultural racism destabilizes colonial assumptions of superiority. Centralizing the importance of people’s cultures makes room to identify and respect their multiplicity of values and practices, including among those previously homogenized into the dominant culture. A dominant culture subjugates those outside or inside the dominant culture or somewhere in between, manifested by gendered and intergenerational violation. As Nzegwu (2006) observed in northwestern Igboland, adoption of the colonizers’ “male-­ privileging systems … solidified the abrogation of the rights of female members of a family” (p. 245). Rights are useful tools as standards and entitlements, and emancipatory social movements have pushed them for subjugated peoples. What is most crucial, though, is a political will to promote the enjoyment of rights, including cultural, and transform oppressive social relations and societal institutions (Ackerly, 2018). In a liberal democracy that to this day lacks a bill of rights, First Australian Gracelyn Smallwood (2015) writes, “The point, I wish to stress, is that to equate Human Rights totally and exclusively with the rights of the individual, is to deprive oppressed groups, such as the Indigenous Australian population, of a means to address their oppression, which is collective as well as individual” (p. 134).

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Rights and family violence In the early 1990s when designing FGDM to stop family violence, the model was framed as defending women and children’s rights to have a say and the process as widening the circle of caring and protections around the family (Pennell & Burford, 1994). These perspectives were buoyed by the previously discussed 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which upheld children’s rights to safety, well-being, and connection to family and culture. Already in place was the UN’s 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) that served as women’s bill of rights (United Nations, General Assembly, 1979). Additionally, in 1993, the United Nations declared that governments were to eliminate violence against women and affirm women’s “fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field” (Article 3).18 Australia, Canada, and NZ ratified19 the CRC and CEDAW relatively quickly, but the US to this day has not. According to the US constitution, the Senate must approve international treaties, and conservatives have long resisted what might be seen as government interference in the family and international threats to national sovereignty.20 A third UN treaty of special relevance to the mission of the FGDM Project was the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, United Nations, General Assembly, 2007). Although the project predated UNDRIP’s passage in 2007, Indigenous peoples since the mid-1970s had seized upon the growing international culture of human rights as a means of reclaiming their rights to self-determination and ancestral lands (Barelli, 2016). Among other provisions, UNDRIP upheld: “States shall take measures, in conjunction with indigenous peoples, to ensure that indigenous women and children enjoy the full protection and guarantees against all forms of violence and discrimination” (Article 22.2). Unlike the conventions on children’s and women’s rights, all four White settler countries from the outset opposed passage of UNDRIP. This declaration was approved by the large majority of members in 2007,21 with the only contrary votes cast by Australia, Canada, NZ, and the US. Years later these countries reversed their position. As a UN declaration, UNDRIP was non-binding on its ratifying countries; still, “international law currently provides indigenous peoples with legal standards and requirements that States can no longer ignore” (Barelli, 2016, p. 5). Within this mix of human rights and resistance to Indigenous rights, the FGDM Project was developed by university-based principal investigators (Gale Burford and myself ) in concert with provincial authorities and participating local communities. As described in Chapter 3 of this book, these communities varied extensively from each other culturally, socioeconomically, and politically. They included an Inuit and settler community in Labrador; a rural peninsula with people of Francophone, Anglophone, and

A Restorative Approach  17

Mi’kmaw (Indigenous) descent; and the capital city with inhabitants primarily of English and Irish origins. The array of planners agreed on a partnership model for stopping family violence (Pennell & Burford, 1994). The Project’s Implementation Report (Pennell & Burford, 1995) laid out the model’s original philosophy and practices.

Reconfiguring old partnerships The FGDM Project was based on the premise that family violence is caused by a “failure of partnership” and, therefore, its solution was to rework “‘old’ partners… family, kin, community, and protective services” into a “new configuration” to “prevent violence over the long term.”22 Reconfiguring relationships required “lacing, relacing, and at times unlacing the ties within and around the family [emphasis added] so that people who have been trapped in abusive relationships have the necessary supports, voice over their affairs, and protections to lead healthy lives free from abuse.” Within the family group, the reconfiguration was to generate plans encompassing the breadth of their members’ “experiences and cultures.” Around the family group, the reconfiguration was to serve as a buffer against “externally imposed solutions that may have little relationship to the families’ needs or aspirations.” At the same time, the FGDM Project did not eliminate the role of courts, police, child welfare, faith communities, civic organizations, or other exogenous bodies of “insisting that the violence be stopped” and supporting the participants’ “involvement in decisions that affect them.” 23 Involving participants meant that the FGDM coordinator, organizing the conference, developed an invitation list with the family group and consulted invitees about “the necessary arrangements for their attending and for protecting their safety.” The beginning of the conferences was structured to welcome participants and “foster a climate of partnership between the extended family members and the mandated authorities” (e.g., child welfare, parole).24 At this time the involved service providers gave reports on what had led to their request for a conference, and invited speakers could offer further information to help the family group understand the situation and become aware of resources that they might choose to include in their plan. Family groups asked questions on areas where they wanted more clarification. The overall intent was “to make sure that the family members had good quality information at their disposal with which to render decisions in the best interests of the abused person(s).” After the information sharing, the family groups moved into “the heart of the conferences”—their “private deliberations.”25 At this time, the FGDM coordinator and other service providers left “the meeting room and the family with their relatives, friends, and other close supports [took] charge of the planning.” Once the family groups had mapped out their plan, they invited the coordinator and the mandated authorities back to review the plan and

18  A Restorative Approach

iron out details. Decision-making rights alone, though, would be insufficient: Implementing the plans necessitated that the family group, community, and state ensure “access to the material and non-material resources and protection to carry out their decisions.” Accordingly, the involved authorities had a two-part responsibility for approving the plan. “The first approval was by the mandated authorities who had referred the family to determine whether or not the plan met their requirements for keeping safe the person who was the subject of the referral. The second type of approval had to do with any resources that were requested to carry out the plan.”26 Crucial was reconvening the conference as necessary to assess developments, rework the plan, and obtain other resources. The next chapter in this volume presents a Newfoundland example from the FGDM Project to illustrate the conferencing process. This partnership framework, covering a range of rights to autonomy, safety, well-being, and heritage, was extended to all family members, including those causing harm. Moving beyond controlling possible causes of criminality, the project stressed that “punishing and/or treating the offender with only criminogenic goals in mind is not enough by itself to keep the abuse from happening again” and commonly “acts to exclude or marginalize family and community members from standing up to the abuse themselves.”27 Today, the FGDM Project’s insistence on partnership across societal sectors, including police and child welfare, may well appear lacking in self-­ reflection. As we discuss next, connecting FGDM to restorative justice paired with responsive regulation may lessen, though not eradicate, systemic bias within state institutions as they interact with families and communities.

Restorative justice and responsive regulation A disconnect between family-based approaches and restorative justice At first, I (and Gale) did not consider the possibility that FGDM was a restorative approach. The disconnect reflects the divergent trajectory of recent Western models called restorative that originated in response to the criminal legal system (McCold, 2006) from FGC as a family-and-culturally-based model. Moreover, as the case with many feminists, I was initially skeptical about applying the term restorative justice to FGDM because it might imply restoring an unjust status quo. I remember vividly to this day my shock when a news reporter in Ottawa asked me if FGDM was about women who had been abused forgiving and reconciling with their partner as part of a restorative process. I was wary of setting up a cycle of domestic violence in which those causing harm apologized, the person abused forgiving, and the couple reconciling until the next outbreak of abuse.

A Restorative Approach  19

My views aligned with James Ptacek’s (2014) judgment, based on his years of counseling men committing violence, that their “pattern of false and often meaningless apologies … was often done to suppress women’s anger rather than to mark a change in abusive conduct” (pp. 11–12). Likewise, Mary P. Koss’s (2014) research on a restorative approach with sexual assault reported that those who committed the offenses wanted and took the opportunity to apologize while those assaulted and their supporters found “their apologies as insincere” (p. 1652). Delving into the psychology of apology, Koss (personal communication, November 11, 2021) explains: “Upon receipt of an apology, victims have steps to go through. An initial question is how good is the apology: Is it sincere and deeply felt, or half-hearted and insincere? Then there is a choice of reaction: Will I accept the apology or not? Forgiveness is the step beyond and not to be confounded with apology. A victim chooses to forgive and should not be pressured.” I was a co-founder of the first shelter for abused women and their children in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and had facilitated support groups for abused women there and later in Manitoba. I was keenly aware of the dangers of pressuring women to return to those who had harmed them and their children. I insisted then, and today, that restoring does not mean that those harmed and those causing harm must reconcile (though this might happen). I do recognize that forgiveness, as a true choice that does not condone the injustice, can uncover the sense of anger and shame from violation, bring healing, and make possible seeing those causing harm as persons (Mckay, Hill, Freedman, & Enright, 2007). Liberatory framework Restorative justice, as propounded by the Australian criminologist John Braithwaite (2002), seeks to uphold universal rights by restoring everyone affected by the harm to “freedom as nondomination and freedom as capability for human functioning” (p. 13). A process can be called restorative if it gives everyone affected by “an injustice an opportunity to tell their stories about its consequences and what needs to be done to put things right,” with the caveat that “this is done within a framework of restorative values that include the need to heal the hurts” (Braithwaite, 2002, p. vii). Braithwaite’s liberatory framework dovetailed with the aspirations of the FGDM Project to overcome coercion and abuse in the home, nurture the growth of all family members, and champion democratic principles. One persistent uncertainty with referencing restorative justice is its ties to the criminal legal system. Requiring restorative programs to seek approval of participants’ decisions by the court and other state authorities restricts moving beyond a “crime logic” of resolving individual incidents (Coker, 2016, p. 2). As a result, restorative justice cannot live up to justice making in

20  A Restorative Approach

the larger sense of validating rights and widening truth-finding to encompass societal conditions and concerns (Gal & Dancig-Rosenberg, 2020). Anti-carceral feminism Anti-carceral feminists in the US differentiate restorative justice (RJ) from transformative justice (TJ), with RJ linked to the carceral system and TJ operating in the community, independent of the criminal legal system (Coker, 2020; Kim, 2018). Anti-carceral proponents urge defunding police, prisons, and child welfare28; increasing appropriations for the social welfare state; and nourishing grassroot efforts by people in their communities (Abrams & Dettlaff, 2020; Goodmark, 2018; Jacobs et al., 2021). Worrisome are the consequences of defunding state institutions in the US when conservative forces are calling for austerity measures targeting low-wealth families and communities and when White supremacist groups are denouncing public authority (notably public health) as restricting their “freedom.” Shifting and augmenting resources, however, holds promise in rebalancing government away from controlling minoritized groups to supporting the population’s well-being as whole. For instance, a common sense and research-supported approach to reducing child neglect, which is strongly correlated with poverty, is to create a more generous welfare system so that parents have the resources to care for their children (Kovski et al., 2021). Because this book is about ending family violence against adults and children, the connection is to both criminal law and child welfare policy. The decision to refer to FGDM as a restorative approach rests, in part, on the model’s development in answer to the control exerted by these two authority systems over families. Most of all, keeping “justice” in restorative justice prevents the criminal legal system from usurping justice as its purview alone and helps distinguish injustice from justice whether speaking of justice in the home and community, nationally, or internationally. Retaining the term restorative justice may be a way to promote greater sharing of ideas than currently exists between the legal and child welfare systems and a restorative approach (Green & Bazelon, 2019). The hope is this sharing will further the movement away from incarceration and family separation without eliminating the government’s role in promoting safety, health,29 education, and welfare and in safeguarding democratic participation. The RJ field has much to offer in theories and practices that are developed in diverse regions of the world and that have the capacity to inform programming, policy, and legislation.30 RJ has the potential to build trust in the possibility of inclusive and democratic government: Participating in the RJ process gives people the opportunity to work with others and learn democratic practices. This learning is sorely needed.

A Restorative Approach  21

Building trust in government Antipathy toward government is entrenched among Americans. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2019) found in 2018 only 31% of Americans expressing satisfaction and confidence in their national government in contrast to 61% for Canadians and an average of 45% for all 32 countries taking part in the study. What stands out, though, is the overall low trust in government globally. Distrust of the state, as the OECD (2019) points out, erodes the “legitimacy of public institutions” and “social cohesion,” crucial for resolving such national and global issues as wars, pandemics, climate change, and forced migration of human and nonhumans. The level of trust, however, varies by specific state institutions, as evident with law enforcement. Two years prior to the 2020 protests of police brutality, the OECD (2019) cross-national study found relatively high trust in the public institution of law enforcement: 79% of Americans reported satisfaction and confidence in police, a percentage between the 82% for Canadians and the average of 77% for all the participating countries. These global percentages leave unanswered questions about whether the respondents’ level of trust is affected by their experience of police with specific types of crime and whether their backgrounds make a difference. Intimate partner violence (IPV) offers a prime example of the interaction of trust in police and people’s identities. Persons with more IPV exposure have significantly lower trust in police, especially if they are African American rather than other races; and not surprisingly, trust in law enforcement goes up when survivors receive a positive response from police, but to a lesser extent for people in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) community than for heterosexuals (Fedina, Backes, Jun, DeVylder, & Barth, 2019). In other words, sexism, racism, and heterosexism are imbedded in people’s experiences of police and their confidence in this state institution. As a dual citizen of my birth country, the US, and adopted country, Canada, my family has personally benefited from the Canadian system of universal health care, public education, family support, employment assistance, old age security, and other programs. As the case with many Canadians, I expect the government to provide for the wellbeing of its populace and extended this same expectation to funding the plans resulting from FGDM conferences. Nonetheless, advocates of transformative justice rightly pose the questions: Should these expectations go beyond support from a welfare state to one of regulating people’s lives? And whom does the system favor? For instance, Canada has the lowest rate of adult incarceration compared to other White settler nations, especially its neighbor, the US, which holds far more punitive views on controlling crime31 (Leigh, 2020). All these countries, however, share a common-law system 32 associated with high

22  A Restorative Approach

imprisonment rates, rather than civil law as employed in Germany, France, and Scandinavian countries (D’Amico & Williamson, 2019). Civil law permits more bureaucratic processes and less adversarial approaches to addressing crime than common law. Moreover, within Canada, Indigenous people are severely overrepresented in the penal system, a product of ongoing colonization (Chartrand, 2019), and non-citizen immigrants are detained indefinitely in prison-like settings, resulting in debilitating mental health conditions (Human Rights Watch, 2021). Legitimate regulation John Braithwaite offers a way to rework the very institutions of concern. Unlike many proponents of restorative justice, Braithwaite (2002) arrived at a restorative approach not as a response to youth offending but instead as a way of regulating corporations. An activist in the consumer and environmental movements, his original objective was to sanction corporate crime. Most governments, however, have not attempted to exert restraint against the excesses within this powerful sector, and some have opted for a restorative approach. This means consensually setting standards with corporations and, with consumer input, conducting audits and making recommendations for improving the services. The result is a restorative approach generating a more responsive system of regulation viewed as legitimate by the regulated industry, its consumers or clients, and the larger community. In turn, this system of responsive regulation serves as a means of checking state domination exerted through capturing vulnerabilities of people and communities. Likewise, responsive regulation checks the overreach of restorative processes that might otherwise be overly lenient or harsh with persons causing harm as well as other participants. With such checks and the availability of resources to support people and civil institutions in meeting their obligations in place, the likelihood increases that persons causing harm are fairly treated, persons harmed do not fear revictimization, and families and their cultural communities are confirmed as competent in halting future harms. Braithwaite recognized that the benefits of responsive regulation need not be limited to the corporate world and could, if not even more readily, be applied to other contexts from preventing youth crime to cross-system reforms in health, education, and social welfare to international peacekeeping. A restorative approach to family violence is more likely to prove effective when delivered within a system of responsive regulation that manages safety, supports healing and well-being, affirms the cultural values of families and communities, and commits to universal rights. This totality is way to give the upper hand to endogenous solutions coming from the family and their cultural network without relinquishing the safeguards coming from responsive external authorities.

A Restorative Approach  23

Remarkably suited Most severe test? Returning to the unexpected conclusion at the outset of this chapter, I asserted that a restorative approach is remarkably suited to ending family violence, with the proviso that its defamiliarization is rendered possible through feminist kin-making. FGDM was a way to act on this faith in families and communities but not without trepidation in the context of family violence. Indeed, I thought of family violence as the most severe test of FGDM, and the bar was raised even further by requesting referrals of the most serious nature. Quite rightly the FGDM Project instituted a host of measures to protect participants.33 Unavailable at the time was research indicating that a restorative approach might just be particularly effective with family violence. What was available at the time was a growing body of evidence of the intervention-caused harms that result from separation-focused policies and practices of the kind so well-­ articulated by leaders from Indigenous, Black, and other groups marginalized by state interventions; a body of evidence that has since continued to grow. Yet, studies of the effectiveness of a restorative approach, to family violence remain scarce. In part, this scarcity can be attributed to prohibitions in jurisdictions of Australia, Canada, Spain, the UK, and the US against applying restorative methods in which the persons causing harm and those harmed come together, even if couples are interested in participating (Cameron, 2006; Llewellyn, Archibald, Clairmont, & Crocker, 2013; Nettleton & Strang, 2018; Villacampa, 2021). Even without legal prohibitions in place, governments are inclined to limit their risks of liability for offering non-­ conventional responses, despite appeals from survivors for a restorative approach (Marder & Zinsmeyer, 2019). Additional reasons for the denial of RJ access to couples were funding restrictions and human subject research protocols. This has been especially evident in large, well-funded, and robust-research programs and pilots out of concern RJ might be a less effective option than “criminal justice business as usual” (Sherman et al., 2015; Strang, Sherman, Mayo-Wilson, Woods, & Ariel, 2013). Nevertheless, a number of studies on a restorative approach with non-domestic-violence cases point to its promise for family violence, and the few studies on this approach with domestic violence show a positive impact. Serious, frequent, violent, and personal A synthesis of 12 experimental studies, in Australia and the UK, of property and non-domestic violence offences compared a restorative approach with conventional justice (Sherman et al., 2015).34 The effectiveness of the restorative approach increased if crimes were serious and frequent, concerned

24  A Restorative Approach

violence rather than property offences, and had personally identifiable victims rather than faceless victims such as a business. These findings boded well for a restorative approach to family violence, which is a pattern of serious and repeated harm against adults and children to whom the persons causing harm are personally related (Stark & Hester, 2019). And familial More recently, two experimental studies in the US35 found that a restorative approach with intimate partners led to reductions in non-domestic violence36 (Mills, Barocas, & Ariel, 2013) or in the seriousness of crimes, including domestic violence (Mills, Barocas, Butters, & Ariel, 2019). As explored in greater depth in Chapter 4 of this volume, the Canadian FGDM study identified that families with a conference fared better than comparable families without a conference in reducing domestic violence and child maltreatment (Pennell & Burford, 2000a). The words of men who had committed family violence help to explain what made for their changes. Especially impactful was the deeply personal nature of the restorative encounters and the men’s growing awareness within the context of their cultural network of the pain that they had inflicted on their family: NZ (Kingi, 2014, p. 148): After the restorative process, a man who had abused his partner acknowledged: “Watching my mother cry was hard to handle. It made me feel ashamed for what I had done.” USA (Pennell & Koss, 2011, p. 208): At the fifth and final family meeting, the man who had committed the abuse spoke in a shaking voice to his family group, “I didn’t like having to do this [the meeting], but I’m glad that you made me do this.” Two years later, he held down a steady job, and his wife said that they were “stronger than ever.” Concurring, his mother said, “I talk with them a couple times a week, and they are doing great…. Now he is just a humble man.” In their faith community, a humble man acted with modesty and went quietly about the work of caring for his family. In other words, the impact of the restorative approach on the men was all the greater not only because the harm was serious, frequent, violent, and personal but also familial. Shifting masculinities In their homes, the men who abused sought recognition by elevating themselves above women and unmanly men (e.g., gay), whom they misrecognized as having little or no value, individually and collectively (Ptacek, 2021).

A Restorative Approach  25

Misogyny and heterosexism were reinforced for low-income men, often of color, by prison time and peer violence and for high-income men, usually White, by corporate position and ruthless competition (Messerschmidt, 2013). Not surprisingly, men who abuse are likely to view other men as even more violent than they are (Mulla et al., 2019). In the intergenerational family group context, men shifted their sense of masculinity. They now were family members rather than combatants or competitors. Like the man whose mother said he was now “just a humble man,” he could take quiet pride in working with others to be a good partner and father rather than narcissistic pride in exerting domination over his family.

Lessening stress, gaining confidence Besides preventing re-offending, two UK experimental studies reported that a restorative approach benefitted those who had been harmed (Angel et al., 2014).37 Their research results showed that robbery and burglary victims, especially women, experienced significantly lower post-traumatic stress symptoms after taking part in the restorative process. This meant reductions in intrusive memories, avoidance of reminders of the stressful event, and hypervigilance. These benefits would be a real boon to abused women, given their high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related low self-esteem ( Jonker et al., 2019). Women’s risk of severe PTSD symptoms rises when social contacts react negatively to learning about the intimate partner violence (Woerner, Wyatt, & Sullivan, 2019). The FGDM study found the restorative process served to lessen harmful criticism by the social network of the women who had been abused.38 From misrecognition to recognition Especially insightful as to why women who have been abused gain confidence in themselves and their family group are their self-reflections on the process. An example from a Bengali family group conference in the UK gives the perspective of a woman who had been harmed by her husband. After the conference, she could now see that “my family were supportive of me in a practical sense as well as backing me up when it came to the abuse…. This gave me a certain amount of confidence where before I was really quite low” (Parkinson & Rogers, 2019, p. 13). As a result, her sense of identity was no longer shaped by her husband’s misrecognition of her as a target for abuse and instead by her family group’s recognition of her as someone who had been violated and worthy of their caring (see Mitchell, 2021). Misrecognition by the child welfare system is devastating for the family group, especially when compounded by racism and exclusion of fathers. An example from a quite White US state, Vermont, is the child welfare system

26  A Restorative Approach

taking a teenage White mother and her newborn son into protective custody (Burford & Pennell, 2014). The child protection worker relied on the hospital nurse’s report that her Black stepfather appeared to be violent. In state care, the young mother was denied access to her mother and stepfather and her infant’s father and his parents at a time when she most needed all their support. A facilitator, from outside of child welfare, organized a family meeting and during the session gently assisted the child welfare worker to distinguish between her “fear” that something might go wrong if the young mother returned home and a “risk” based on what had actually happened (Burford & Pennell, 2014, p. 177). Afterwards, the teen’s mother explained, “We felt better in the end that finally we were able to say again in front of [the social worker] … [what] we’ve been saying all along and haven’t been heard” (Burford & Pennell, 2014, p. 178). Although it took far too long, the family group, including the Black stepfather, was finally recognized as caring about the teen mother. Catalyst for change Looking back, we realize that the very seriousness of family violence and its deeply personal meaning in the lives of children and adults can catalyze the family group to work for change. Trusting family and cultural networks to end family violence may appear to some as naïve and dangerous and to others as realistic and sensible. A safety assessment that attends closely to wishes of those harmed and their supporters and to their strategies for safely conferencing is necessary before proceeding. The restorative process requires guardrails, and an inclusive feminist politics of kin-making can carefully construct and re-construct alliances within communities and across social movements and societal sectors to generate responsive and responsible procedures.

Threads and contradictory tensions From the book’s conclusion on the remarkable suitability of a restorative approach to family violence, four main narrative threads can be teased out. These threads are storylines within a larger narrative about feminist kin-­ making and defamiliarizing family violence. Each thread is entwined around a central question about remaking relationships for the better, and inherent in the threads are contradictory tensions. Narrative thread 1: Restoring family and cultural leadership Given that norms sustaining family violence are deeply engrained in societal institutions, how can familial networks defamiliarize gendered and intergenerational harms in their midst and reinforce nurturing relationships?

A Restorative Approach  27

One possibility may appear fragile but is amazingly sturdy: restoring the leadership of families and their cultural networks over their lives and in their communities. Inviting the family and their cultural networks to the conference is one step toward reestablishing their leadership. Cultural networks include the family and their sources of kinship and identity, and the networks have experiences and traditions that offer guidance in expressing their relatedness and mutual responsibility. Restoring their leadership means that cultural networks can exert wise care of their resources and forge external partnerships in keeping with their values and self-­determination or sovereignty (Calliou & Wesley-Esquimaux, 2015). Contradictory Tension: Will homegrown leadership originating from within cultural networks be allowed to thrive, or will exogenous authorities stunt their capacity to stop family violence? Such endogenous power disputes external systems of authority and bodies of knowledge about the causes of family violence and its solutions. Narrative thread 2: Storytelling for hope and recovery Given the plurality of perspectives in cultural networks, how can family members of all family statuses, genders, sexualities, ages, and abilities express the pain they have endured, listen closely to each other, and envision hope and change for the future? Storytelling brings into the open profound betrayals of trust and has the potential to upheave presuppositions and generate the understanding that instills empathy and insists on change. This sharing so often happens at the FGDM during the family private time when the service providers are outside the room but can also happen throughout the conference or during the lead-up to the conference or afterwards. This inclusive restorying is a pathway to family healing. What sustains the family continuing on the pathway to recovery is support from their social networks and community that offer needed resources and activities for engagement and, at heart, revive collective hope and trust (Best & Musgrove, 2019). Contradictory Tension: Will attention be given to the multiplicity of perspectives in families, especially those of women and children, necessary for recovery from family violence? Dominant cultural norms may suppress the views of less powerful family members and arrest the mutual learning that inclusive dialogue would have offered about family violence. Narrative thread 3: Regulating responsively the healing process Given that inclusive storytelling challenges domination, how can safeguards be put in place to ward off retaliation and to further healing? These safeguards need to minimize risks of harm and expand opportunities for growth.

28  A Restorative Approach

The dual aims of protection and support require sensitivity to the healing process so as to avoid under or over controlling. Calibrating that delicate balance, with adjustments on an ongoing basis, is responsive regulation (Ayres & Braithwaite, 1992; Braithwaite, Braithwaite, & Burford, 2019). Preferably safeguards include personal and cultural appreciations, inclusive dialogue, gentle persuasion, and a host of means to recognize meritorious action and draw out the families’ commitments, caring, and creativity. As necessary, the safeguards take the form of protections starting with the least enforcement such as education on harms, eldering by influential family or community members, and supports from local services. Only if the dangers are grave and imminent are family members separated, and once the danger is past, the protections are shifted down to less enforcement or over to the affirmative safeguards. Such a flexible, yet steadfast, response in the human services is most likely to occur under conditions of “hybridization of governance” (Burford, Braithwaite, & Braithwaite, 2019, p. 14). Hybridization positions the state as a support, assessor, and funder rather than a substitute for the caring of families and communities. Local networks and organizations are closest to families and can best form positive relationships and gauge how to offer validations and monitor the complexities of evolving family situations. As needed, the state can step in to offer protections and then step out as local networks re-engage. Contradictory Tension: Will government institutions sensitively adjust their responses to the strengths and circumstances of families and apply the least controls necessary? Disclosure of family violence is likely to evoke strong emotional responses from workers and the public, tilting the balance of regulation to exogenous means of control such as child removal or law enforcement. Narrative thread 4: Cascading trust and nonviolence Given that responsive regulation needs bolstering to prevent government institutions from slipping back to overly permissive or authoritarian stances to family violence, how can alliances be forged within communities and across nations to forestall such lapses? Through the restorative process, collaborations are likely to coalesce among women and their allies in the larger family, community organizations, service agencies, workplaces, and political forums. These alliances have the capacity to promote relational governance that steers responses toward participatory democracy and away from emulating corporate and military top-down command structures. The interconnections within and among these collaborations are weaker than in the family, and with less socialization into the same norms, participants

A Restorative Approach  29

are open to new understandings and strategies (Granovetter, 2017). The intermingling creates a nonlinear, dynamic system by which a small input can generate disproportionately larger outputs (Rickles, Hawe, & Shiell, 2007). The result is a cascade effect by which one critical change in responding to family violence initiates further changes that, in turn, generate further changes in many directions. The resulting cascades of trust and nonviolence alter the terrain, re-­channel relationships, feed in resources, and sustain change. This cascading is feminist kin-making by which dialogue and collaborative action refresh each other to overturn ideological and economic oppression. Contradictory Tension: Will trusting and nonviolent cascades increase their momentum, volume, and multi-directionality over the long-term and generate lasting change? Family violence and repressive societal institutions have the power to block or re-block their flow.

The relevance of location While restorative developments in numerous countries are cited, the book centers on Canada. This nation offers an illuminating example for understanding a restorative approach because of its cultural diversity and government-­community partnerships. Canada is a settler nation with two officially recognized languages, English and French, and at the last census count in 201639 had a rapidly growing population above 35 million, reporting over 250 ethnic origins, of which 6% (2 million people) identified themselves as Aboriginal in descent (Statistics Canada, 2017). As previously noted, Canada is also a country with greater confidence in government than is currently the case in much of the world. This greater confidence extends to Canadian women’s organizations today (Bonifacio, 2017) and earlier at the time of the FGDM Project and, thus, can assist with taking another look at feminist strategies. Comparing majority feminist movements in Westernized countries in the latter half of the 20th century, Rankin and Vickers (1998) concluded that the French, British, and American were “the most disengaged from official politics” but “dominated international feminist scholarly discourse”; “by contrast, the Scandinavian, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian women’s movements have been the most state-­centric, but have been marginalized somewhat in feminist discourse” (p. 342). The next chapter stitches the four narrative threads into an example of a Newfoundland family group of European heritage. With their permission, the FGDM Project documented their grappling with intergenerational and gendered violence and their relationships with the involved service providers. Their experience is placed within the context of their cultural values on class and gender and a liberatory expression of rights. The chapter concludes

30  A Restorative Approach

by posing further questions about a restorative approach to family violence; these questions are further explored, though not definitively answered, over the course of the book. With the benefit of hindsight, the third chapter considers how and why the FGDM Project was possible at a time when the Canadian government was clawing back social welfare and criminalizing domestic violence. In the lead up to the start of conferencing, provincial structures were put in place to support a responsive system of governance for engaging families and their communities in resolving family violence. Particularly salient was the host sites’ different approaches to local organizing, shaped by their distinctive historical and cultural contexts. The results of the careful groundwork are examined in the fourth chapter. By revisiting FGDM conferencing and its aftermath, the families’ impressive progress can be viewed as a reset of the entire narrative of their lives and their cultural network, moving them toward recognition as competent, responsible, and caring. A full cultural revival, however, needs more than conferencing as exemplified by the Mi’kmaq in Western NL, pushing back against years of cultural disparagement and forming their own band. Neighboring Nova Scotia offers a model of the Mi’kmaq taking charge of their children and families and bringing family groups together in circles for healing from gendered, intergenerational, and societal violence. The final chapter examines the systemic interference blocking a restorative approach to family violence. A prime example is the FGDM Project itself that failed in NL to move beyond a short-term project to an ongoing program, despite the province passing legislation intended to further its access to families. The chapter’s main focus, though, is on strategies applied in different countries that energize family-and-community-based approaches, cascading trust in families and their cultural networks.

Notes



1. This book capitalizes “White” when referring to a racial category while acknowledging forceful arguments against giving such recognition to a racial designation based on a White supremacist worldview. For pro and con arguments on capitalizing White, see Appiah (2020). 2. The term “child welfare” is used to reflect the array of interventions, including investigations, child placements, and adoptions. 3. Through defamiliarization, the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky sought to destabilize habitual thinking in order to see better ( Jestrovic, 2018). 4. For a description of the beliefs of the Society of Friends (Quakers), see https:// www.fgcquaker.org/discover/faqs-about-quakers#believe? 5. These concerns were later enumerated in Strang and Braithwaite (2002). 6. The North Carolina Family Group Conferencing Project held the conference for Tiffany and Jerome’s family. For reporting on this project, see Pennell and Anderson (2005) and https://go.ncsu.edu/ncfgc.

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7. Kim Tallbear is a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe based in South Dakota and descended from the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma. She is a professor at the University of Alberta in Canada. 8. The other common method was victim support circles, which were less likely to include those committing the harm. 9. National Compadres Network (n.d.). Retrieved April 10, 2021, from https://www. nationalcompadresnetwork.org/about/ 10. COVID-19 caused “shocking” inequalities: Human rights chief Bachelet. (2021, September 28). UN News. Retrieved December 24, 2021, from https://news. un.org/en/story/2021/09/1101552 11. Militarization of police refers to their adopting the values, appearance, equipment, tactics, and structure of the military (Phillips, 2018). 12. For example in NZ, see Thom and Quince (2020). 13. The FGDM Project’s implementation and outcomes are documented respectively in Pennell and Burford (1995) and Burford and Pennell (1998a), and these reports along with the project’s manual (Burford, Pennell, & MacLeod, 1995) are available at https://go.ncsu.edu/fgdm. 14. Aotearoa is Maori for the “land of the long white cloud.” The landmark legislation, originally called the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act, was passed in 1989 and covered both care and protection (child welfare) and youth justice. In 2017, the importance of cultural respect was emphasized by the adoption of new titles for the 1989 legislation: for Maori speakers, Oranga Tamariki Act and for English speakers, the Children’s and Young People’s Well-being Act. 15. The Maori are Indigenous Polynesian people who began to settle on the islands of NZ in the late 13th and early 14th centuries and formed a distinct Maori culture. 16. The women’s group was under the auspices of Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata. The group was organized around the spiritual guidance of the Medicine Wheel’s four directions: beginning anew, gaining trust, defining personhood, and separating from worldly struggles (Storm, 1972). The status Indian and Métis co-facilitators coauthored with me a narrative of the group (Perrault, Hudson, & Pennell, 1996). 17. Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act, 1989, Section 13, p. 460. Retrieved March 8, 2021, from http://www.nzlii.org/nz/legis/hist_act/cypatfa19891989n24426/ 18. This declaration was adopted without a vote, which some viewed as “unfair” and others viewed as meeting “an urgent need for uniformity with respect to the rights of women.” See Wikipedia. (n.d.). Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Retrieved February 25, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Declaration_on_the_Elimination_of_Violence_Against_Women and When will domestic violence against women end? (2015). 19. While countries can sign a UN declaration to indicate their (nonbinding) intention to follow its terms, ratification requires countries to follow their internal procedures to gain national approval of the treaty and only then can they ratify the international treaty. 20. See Attiah, K. (2014, November 21). Why won’t the U.S. ratify the U.N.’s child rights treaty? Washington Post. Retrieved March 5, 2021, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/11/21/why-wont-the-u-s-ratifythe-u-n-s-child-rights-treaty/ and Cumming-Bruce, N. (2018, June 5). Taking migrant children from parents is illegal, U.N. tells U.S. New York Times. Retrieved March 5, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/world/americas/ us-un-migrant-children-families.html 21. In 2007, 144 member nations voted in favor, 11 abstained, and 4 voted against. 22. All the quotations in this paragraph and the next paragraph are from the Implementation Report, Vol. I, p. 1.

32  A Restorative Approach 23. All the quotations in this paragraph are from the Implementation Report, Vol. I, pp. 5–6. 24. Implementation Report, Vol. I, p. 130. 25. Implementation Report, Vol. I, p. 143. 26. Implementation Report, Vol. I, p. 189. 27. Implementation Report, Vol. I, p. 5. 28. Anti-carceral spokespersons with lived experience of child welfare and, in particular, foster care, urge renaming “child welfare” as part of the “family regulation” or “family destruction” system (Strengthened bonds, 2021). 29. For instance, those countries that were able to effectively manage the coronavirus had strong national leadership, such as Taiwan, and those that lacked such leadership did not, such as the US during Donald Trump’s presidency (Zakaria, 2020). 30. Journals are a way to access a wide range of RJ work from different parts of the world: For example, The International Journal of Restorative Justice, Contemporary Justice Review, African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies, The Internet Journal of Restorative Justice (IJRJ), Negotiation & Dispute Resolution eJournal, Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, British Journal of Community Justice, The China Journal, Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online. 31. In 2016, Canada’s rate of adult incarceration was approximately 16% of the US rate (Leigh, 2020). 32. The other factor associated with high incarceration rates is a history of communist rule. 33. The safety measures are detailed in the FGDM Project’s manual. 34. These 12 coordinated studies were randomized control trials started between 1995 and 2001. 35. The two experimental studies in the US randomly assigned persons causing harm respectively to a restorative approach or a battering intervention program (Mills, Barocas, & Ariel, 2013) or to a restorative approach plus a battering intervention program or a battering intervention program alone (Mills, Barocas, Butters, & Ariel, 2019). 36. The decrease in recidivism was greater for the intervention than comparison group for measures at six months to two years post starting the group. Only at one year, however, was the difference statistically significant. 37. These two experimental studies were among the 12 experimental studies noted above and took place in the UK. 38. Outcome Report, Vol. I, pp. 222–226. 39. Canada conducted a census count in 2021, with the results not available for this volume.

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A Restorative Approach  39 Pennell, J. (2005c). Safety for mothers and their children. In J. Pennell & G. Anderson (Eds.), Widening the circle: The practice and evaluation of family group conferencing with children, youths, and their families (pp. 163–181). Washington, DC, US: NASW Press. Pennell, J., & Anderson, G. (Eds.). (2005). Widening the circle: The practice and evaluation of family group conferencing with children, youths, and their families. Washington, DC, US: NASW Press. Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (1994). Widening the circle: Family group decision making. Journal of Child & Youth Care, 9(1), 1–12. Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (1995). Family group decision making: New roles for ‘old’ partners in resolving family violence: Implementation Report (Vols. I–II). St. John’s, NL, CA: Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work. Available at https://go.ncsu. edu/fgdm Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (2000a). Family group decision making: Protecting children and women. Child Welfare, 79(2), 131–158. Pennell, J., Burford, G., Sasson, E., Packer, H., & Smith, E. L. (2021). Family and community approaches to intimate partner violence: Restorative programs in the United States. Violence Against Women, 27(10), 1608–1629. doi: 10.1177/1077801220945030. Pennell, J., & Koss, M. P. (2011). Feminist perspectives on family rights: Social work and restorative justice processes to stop women abuse. In E. Beck, N. P. Kropf, & P. B. Leonard (Eds.), Social work and restorative justice: Skills for dialogue, peacemaking, and reconciliation (pp. 195–219). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press. Perez, D. R., & González-Martin, R. (2018). Race and cultural practice in popular culture. New Brunswick, NJ, US: Rutgers University Press. Perrault, S., Hudson, B., & Pennell, J. (1996). Having a balance. In J. L. Ristock & J. Pennell, Community research as empowerment: Feminist links, postmodern interruptions (pp. 24–33). Toronto, ON, CA: Oxford University Press. Petrusic, N., Todorovic, N., Vracevic, M., & Jankovic, B. (2015). Financial abuse of older women in Serbia. Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect, 27(4–5), 410–421. doi: 10.1080/08946566.2015.1094300. Phillips, S. W. (2018). Police militarization: Understanding the perspectives of police chiefs, administrators, and tactical officers. New York, NY, US: Routledge. doi:10.4324/ 9780429490422 Polavarapu, A. (2019). Global carceral feminism and domestic violence: What the West can learn from reconciliation in Uganda. Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, 42(1), 301–353. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3188271 Pryce, J., & Yelick, A. (2021). Racial disproportionality and disparities among African American children in the child welfare system. In A. J. Dettlaff (Ed.), Racial disproportionality and disparities in the child welfare system (pp. 45–68). New York, NY, US: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-54314-3_4 Ptacek, J. (2021). Hidden dramas of masculinity: Women’s perspectives on intimate violence in different social classes. Violence Against Women, 27(5), 666–687. doi: 10.1177/1077801220958486. Ptacek, J. (2014, May). Evaluation research on restorative justice and intimate partner violence: A review and critique. In Can intimate partner violence be prevented? A workshop on developing effective primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions. The National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice, Arlington, VA. Retrieved June 12, 2021, from https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=ipv

40  A Restorative Approach RadovicMarkovic, M. (2012). Impact of globalization on organizational culture, behaviour and gender role. Charlotte, NC, US: Information Age Publishing. Rangihau, J. (1986). Pau-te-Ata-tu (Daybreak): Report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori perspective for the Department of Social Welfare. Wellington, NZ: Department of Social Welfare, Government Printing Office. Available at https://msd.govt. nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/archive/1988-­ puaoteatatu.pdf Rankin, L. P., & Vickers, J. (1998). Locating women’s politics. In M. Tremblay & C. Andrew (Eds.), Women and political representation in Canada (pp. 341–367). Ottawa, ON, CA: University of Ottawa Press. Raz, M. (2020). Abusive policies: How the American child welfare system lost its way. Chapel Hill, NC, US: University of North Carolina Press. Rickles, D., Hawe, P., & Shiell, A. (2007). A simple guide to chaos and complexity. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 61(11), 933–937. doi:10.1136/jech.2006.054254. Retrieved October 23, 2019, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC2465602/ Roberto, K. A., & Hoyt, E. (2021). Abuse of older women in the United States: A review of empirical research, 2017–2019. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 57, 1–14. doi. org/10.1016/j.avb.2020.101487 Roberts, D. (2021). The community impact of racial disproportionality: The racial geography of child welfare. In A. J. Dettlaff (Ed.), Racial disproportionality and disparities in the child welfare system (pp. 232–251). New York, NY, US: Springer. Rollins, L. S. (Ed.). (2021). Engaging and working with African American fathers: Strategies and lessons. New York, NY, US: Routledge Books. Schalk, S. (2018). Bodyminds reimagined: (Dis)ability, race, and gender in Black women’s speculative fiction. Durham, NC, US: Duke University Press. doi: 10.1215/9780822371830 Schout, G., & de Jong, G. (2021). Evaluating family group conferences in adult mental health: A plea for a responsive approach. In A. de Roo & R. Jagtenberg (Eds.), Family group conference research: Reflections and ways forward (pp. 77–95). The Hague, Netherlands: Eleven International. Shaheen-Hussain, S. (2020). Fighting for a hand to hold: Confronting medical colonialism against Indigenous children in Canada. Montreal, QC, CA: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Sherman, L. W., Strang, H., Barnes, G., Woods, D. J., Bennett, S., Inkpen, N., & Slothower, M. (2015). Twelve experiments in restorative justice: The Jerry Lee program of randomized trials of restorative justice conferences. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 11(4), 501–540. doi: 10.1007/s11292-015-9247-6. Sijtsema, J. J., Stolz, E. A., & Bogaerts, S. (2020). Unique risk factors of the co-­occurrence between child maltreatment and intimate partner violence perpetration. European Psychologist, 25(2), 122–133. doi: 10.1027/1016-9040/a000396. Smallwood, G. (2015). Indigenist critical realism: Human rights and First Australians’ well-­ being. London, UK: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315749556. Stark, E., & Hester, M. (2019). Coercive control: Update and review. Violence Against Women, 25(1), 81–104. doi: 10.1177/1077801218816191. Statistics Canada. (2017). Census profile, 2016. Statistics Canada Catalogue, No. 98-316X2016001. Ottawa, ON, CA. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://www12. statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E Storey, J. (2019). Radical utopianism and cultural studies: On refusing to be realistic. London, UK: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315201580

A Restorative Approach  41 Strang, H., & Braithwaite, J. (Eds.). (2002). Restorative justice and family violence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Strang, H., Sherman, L. W., Mayo-Wilson, E., Woods, D., & Ariel, B. (2013). Restorative justice conferencing (RJC) using face-to-face meetings of offenders and victims: Effects on offender recidivism and victim satisfaction. A systematic review. Campbell Systematic Review, 9(1), 1–59. doi: 10.4073/csr.2013.12. Strengthened bonds: Abolishing the child welfare system and re-envisioning child well-being (2021, June 16–18). Virtual symposium of The Columbia Journal of Race and Law, New York, NY, US. Storm, H. (1972). Seven arrows. New York, NY, US: Harper and Row. TallBear, K. (2013). Genomic articulations of indigeneity. Social Studies of Science, 43(4), 509–533. doi: 10.1177/0306312713483893. Thom, K., & Quince, K. (2020, June 10). Black Lives Matter outrage must drive police reform in Aotearoa-New Zealand too. Stuff. Retrieved December 19, 2020, from https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/121777971/black-lives-matter-outrage-mustdrive-police-reform-in-aotearoanew-zealand-too?rm=a Turgeon, B. (2018). A critical discourse analysis of welfare-to-work program managers’ expectations and evaluations of their clients’ mothering. Critical Sociology, 44(1), 127–140. doi: 10.1177/0896920516654555. Turner, N. J. (2020). From “taking” to “tending”: Learning about Indigenous land and resource management on the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 77(7–8), 2472–2482. doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsaa095. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2013). Neglect, abuse and violence against older women. Retrieved July 30, 2021, from http://www.un.org/esa/ socdev/documents/ageing/neglect-abuse-violence-older-women.pdf United Nations, General Assembly. (1979, December 18). Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. Retrieved March 13, 2021, from https://www. un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm#intro United Nations, General Assembly. (1989, November 20). Convention on the rights of the child. Retrieved March 13, 2021, from https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/ convention-text# United Nations, General Assembly. (2007, September 13). Declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. Retrieved March 13, 2021, from https://www.un.org/development/ desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf United Nations, Security Council. (2021, April 14). Women still suffering in war zones, Special Representative tells Security Council, highlighting unmet global commitments to victims of sexual violence. Retrieved March 11, 2022, from https://www. un.org/press/en/2021/sc14493.doc.htm. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau [USDHHS]. (2019). Child maltreatment 2017. Available at: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ sites/default/files/cb/cm2017.pdf Valandra, E. C./Hokšíla, W. W. (Ed.). (2020). Colorizng restorative justice: Voicing restorative justice: Voicing our realities. St. Paul, MN, US: Living Justice Press. van Berkel, S. R., Prevoo, M. J. L., Linting, M., Pannebakker, F. D., & Alink, L. R. A. (2020). Prevalence of child maltreatment in the Netherlands: An update and cross-time comparison. Child Abuse & Neglect, 103, 104439–104439. doi:10.1016/j. chiabu.2020.104439

42  A Restorative Approach Van Camp, T. (2014). Victims of violence and restorative practices: Finding a voice. London, UK and New York, NY, US: Routledge. Villacampa, C. (2021). Spanish criminal policy and the state pact on gender violence: A critical assessment. SN Social Sciences, 1(5), 1–20. doi: 10.1007/s43545-021-00141-6. When will domestic violence against women end? (2015, November 28). AllAfrica Global Media. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. Wielenga, C., Batley, M., & Murambadoro, R. (2020). Beyond restorative justice: Understanding justice from an African perspective. Ubuntu, 9(1), 43–69. doi: 10.31920/2050-4950/2020/9n1a3. Woerner, J., Wyatt, J., & Sullivan, T. P. (2019). If you can’t say something nice: A latent profile analysis of social reactions to intimate partner violence disclosure and associations with mental health symptoms. Violence Against Women, 25(10), 1243–1261. doi: 10.1177/1077801218811681. Zakaria, F. (2020). Ten lessons for a post-pandemic world. New York, NY, US: W. W. Norton.

Chapter 2

FGDM Example—A Newfoundland Story

Fairy tales in oral tradition see the world from the bottom up; in their natural state they are inherently revolutionary. –Best, Greenhill, and Lovelace (2019, p. 10), on the magic tales of Newfoundland

Cultural storytelling for liberatory transformation The generosity of a Newfoundland family group made this FGDM story possible. The family, referred to as “F.,”1 was willing to share their experience of conferencing to help others in overcoming family violence. The family’s solutions to family violence were molded out of their own culture on the island of Newfoundland, off the East Coast of mainland Canada. With its chronically struggling economy, this foggy and windswept island, set well out in the frigid North Atlantic Ocean, was fondly nicknamed “The Rock.” “Inherently revolutionary,” the narrative created at the conference validated family connections while defamiliarizing violation within the home. Crucially, in no longer taking for granted that family violence would be part of their lives, the family group reached into their own traditional knowledge of resisting class and gender oppression. Traditional knowledge is passed down over the generations through telling stories (Lindahl, 2001; Shannon, Sasse, Sheridan, & Heinrich, 2017). The White settlers in NL told tales to educate their young about how to survive in an often-hostile world, lead healthy and good lives, and affirm their cultural identity. These oral traditions were “inherently revolutionary.”

White settler-narrated magic tales Most NL White settlers were of English and Irish stock, dependent on the fisheries for their livelihoods, and under the control of the merchant class (Handcock, 2000; Mannion, 2000). The truck system by which merchants, often working off the back of trucks, outfitted fishing families, who then DOI: 10.4324/9781003105374-2

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repaid these loans at the end of the season by handing over their catches at prices set by the merchants. The system led to a cycle of debt and subsistence economy in fishing communities. Nevertheless, a man could present himself as a contractor rather than a wage earner, dictate the work of his household, and claim the role of patriarch over his family (Korneski, 2020). In 1949, the island of Newfoundland with Labrador, on the mainland, became a Canadian province, with the ensuing host of social, economic, and political changes leading to fears of losing their culture. Offering a means of reinforcing cultural values, the oral tradition of magic tales remained alive in the province, and to safeguard this sense of cultural identity, a folklore department was established at the sole provincial university (Widdowson, 2009). As explored further in Chapter 3, the collapse of the cod fishery in 1992, the year just before the initiation of the FGDM Project, had a profound impact on provincial assets and undermined an already weak economy (Bavington, 2010). Still, whether staying on the island or out-migrating in search of work, Newfoundlanders’ ties to family and culture remained strong over the years (Delisle, 2013). Working-class resistance A well-loved genre were the magic tales of Jack, common in Europe as well as in Canada and the US (Lindahl, 2001). A familiar example is “Jack and the Beanstalk.” These man-centered stories taught young males the rules of being a working-class man: seeking and retaining employment, relating to family and elders, and finding a wife (Lovelace, 2001). Although starting on his quest as an everyday youth, Jack is open-handed to others and receives in return advice from trustworthy older men and magical gifts from birds and other donors, does not shy away from impossible tasks set by the ogre (also known as [aka] employer), or yield to demands to disclose his secret knowledge (aka occupational skills) (Lovelace, 2001). In the end, Jack, the ingenious trickster, succeeds in marrying the princess and gains his kingdom. For Jack, there are two worlds: a fraught world in which Jack navigates relations with dangerous employers from an elevated social class and a hospitable world of the home to which Jack returns with his dependable and loving female partner (Lovelace, 2001). Once Jack marries, the story happily ends. Conversely, for magic tales centered on females, the dangers start with the wedding (Best et al., 2019). Domestic struggles A treasured tale of a young woman, called “Peg or Pegg Bearskin,”2 recounts her quest to save her family and then her own marriage. The story begins with domestic violence against Peg’s mother because she remained without

FGDM Example  45

child for years after her marriage. Female teller Elizabeth Brewer in 1976 referred obliquely to the violence as the husband being “real nasty” (Halpert & Widdowson, 1996, p. 215 & 225). In the 1987 telling by Brewer’s relative, Pius Power, the story explicitly discloses her husband’s violence, “He can’t be a husband at all to beat his wife” (Best et al., 2019, p. 105). Brewer’s “real nasty” is coded language for domestic violence in a cultural context where family members, especially women, did not talk about the violence in public (Tye & Greenhill, 2020). Power, even though originally from the same fishing outport as Brewer, had no such constraints as a male narrator on naming the abuse of wives. Regardless of the narrators’ gender, though, their words evince strong disapproval of the husband’s actions. To become pregnant, Peg’s mother was advised by an older man to eat two sweet berries in her garden but leave the third and bitter berry. She, however, ate all three and, nine months later, gave birth to three daughters of whom the first two were beautiful but selfish and the third was ugly but kind (Best et al., 2019; Halpert & Widdowson, 1996). The daughters traveled away from home3 and encountered a witch (aka relatives in a patrilocal social system in which women moved to their husband’s community). Applying her culinary expertise with salt and pepper and other domestic know-how, Peg thwarted the witch from cooking her sisters. These stratagems are reminiscent of the often-told fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel at the gingerbread house where Gretel succeeded in pushing the witch into the oven, thus, saving her brother’s life. Then, Peg, using the witch’s magical possessions as bargaining chips, convinced the king to wed his two older sons to her attractive sisters, and far more reluctantly, the king consented to his third son marrying hairy Peg. Sensitive to her husband’s marital discontent, Peg finally faced a challenge that she could not overcome through her own ingenuity and resorted to magical intervention in which her husband became the cook (Tye & Greenhill, 2020). She insisted that he throw her into the fire (aka kill her); after reluctantly acceding to her wish, he was filled with remorse. When this self-sacrificing young woman emerged from the fire, now roasted, she was as beautiful on the outside as she had always been on the inside and loved by her prince.4 Thus, starting with the magical berries, each step on Peg’s journey conveyed the message of the transformative capacity of food and its preparation by women to overcome violence within the home (Tye & Greenhill, 2020). Tales of transformation Both Jack and Peg were the underdogs in an underdog colony or province: Jack to the ogre employers and Peg to the witch relatives. Jack’s ingenuity was in transforming hostile workplaces whether on The Rock or the mainland, after which he returns with a loving partner to the safety and warmth of

46  FGDM Example

home and community. Peg’s ingenuity lay in transforming abusive relations within the domestic sphere. The fairy tales, as narrated, “see the world from the bottom up” and “are inherently revolutionary” in their assertion of the rights of workers and women while keeping to their cultural practices (Best et al., 2019, p. 10). The largest challenge that the stories posed was to uphold ties of kinship and community against an increasingly individualistic ideology and market economy, disrupting families and forcing outmigration.

The FGDM lead-up As seen in the FGDM story, the F. family exhibited many of the assumptions and strategies in the magical tales of Jack and Peg. Themes from the prior chapter about family violence, restorative justice, and feminist kin-making emerge in the discussion of the FGDM conference. Like most people on the island, the two sides of the family (the family group), as well as the involved service providers, all spoke English and were of European descent. In fact, in St. John’s, the project evaluation found that none of the conferenced parents and the interviewed relatives and friends identified as Francophone or Indigenous.5 On the Port au Port Peninsula, a similar pattern was found except for a scattering of the parents and a small minority of informal network members identifying as Francophone or Indigenous. Only in Nain on the mainland did all parents and nearly all family groups give their ethnicity as Indigenous. Chapters 3 and 4 return to the issue of ethnicity. Evident in the family group’s story, other layers of identity and alliance surfaced as they readied themselves for George’s release from prison. George had committed violence against his wife, Sarah, and assumed that she would take him back, something that Sarah and their two young sons, Kevin and Jason, did not want. The older son, Kevin (11 years old), exposed to the violence over a longer period than his younger brother, had been emotionally abused by George and dreaded his father’s return. Sarah worried that she would allow George back as she had done on so many occasions before. A parole officer had initially referred the family to the FGDM Project, based at Memorial University, where Gale and I were faculty and the project’s principal investigators. At the time, the officer thought the couple intended to reunite and needed a plan in place to protect Sarah and the boys. When he learned that Sarah had no such intention, he assumed that a conference was no longer required and almost rescinded the referral. The coordinator, responsible for organizing and convening the conference, persuaded the parole officer otherwise. The coordinator had worked extensively with abused women and recognized that Sarah needed a tremendous amount of support to keep her resolve. George also needed support and monitoring to reenter the community without harm to his family. And the family group needed a shared learning

FGDM Example  47

process on watching out for all their members and reaching together a plan for Sarah, George, and their two sons.

Another angle The FGDM story is based on the research notes of the coordinator and researcher involved with this family group’s conference, and the notes include their reflections on the process and interviews with family members and service providers. This FGDM story was published over two decades ago (Pennell & Burford, 2000b). In the current version, the story is rewritten from another angle. Originally, the story was a response to questions frequently asked in the 1990s: What does FGDM look like in action? Should conferencing be used with family violence? And if so, how can it be carried out safely and effectively? Today, these questions remain of keen interest, while others have emerged in a time when carceral fixes to family violence are increasingly disputed for fracturing rather than healing families. In response to these critiques, Chapter 1 unwound four narrative threads concerning a restorative approach to family violence. The contradictory tensions inherent in the four narrative threads foreground a set of questions concerning cultural practice and liberatory analysis, and each of these questions are considered in turn. As shown in Table 2.1, the four threads in this Newfoundland family narrative are each connected to vital work of conferencing in order to elucidate the process. In actuality, the threads cut across the entire process. The F. family was already within the system or rather systems of correctional services and child welfare. Accordingly, questions are raised about the impact of the conference if the father were not in prison and the children were not under provincial supervision. Another factor affecting this conference was that the family was referred toward the end of the FGDM Project, when federal correctional services came on board with making referrals. The project’s post-conference interviews with family group members continued for one year after the end of funding for holding conferences. Because George was released from prison 15 months later than anticipated, the project could not offer a follow-up Table 2.1  Narrative Threads and FGDM Work Restorative thread

FGDM work

1.  Restoring family and cultural leadership

Referral to and preparations for conference Introductions and information sharing Creating and finalizing the plan Carrying out the plan

2.  Storytelling for hope and recovery 3.  Regulating responsively healing process 4.  Cascading trust and nonviolence

48  FGDM Example

conference to adjust the plan on his discharge or collect data from the family group on how Sarah, George, and their two sons fared once he settled back into the community. These are both major shortcomings of a time-limited project. Turning to the first narrative thread on restoring family and cultural leadership, the story unfolds how the preparations in advance of the conference set the stage for the family group assuming leadership over their affairs. The very gravity of the situation—serious, frequent, violent, personal, and harming family—could not readily be ignored once out in the open and with public authorities involved. The result was that the family group was mobilized and accepted the invitation to take part.

Restoring family and cultural leadership Contradictory Tension: Will homegrown leadership originating from within cultural networks be allowed to thrive, or will exogenous authorities stunt their capacity to stop family violence? Sarah’s determination Sarah, knowing that she was susceptible to pressure from George and his relatives, was afraid that she might again go along with her husband’s wishes once he left prison. Nevertheless, she was determined that the conference proceed. She wanted her and George’s relatives to understand her reasons for holding the conference and to get help for herself and especially her older son. Sarah had a clear purpose for the conference but one that a preliminary reading of the family dynamics might predict ending in failure. Her determination was even more necessary, given George’s minimization of his violence. After a call with George at the prison, the coordinator recorded that he thought it was enough that he had given his promise not to hit again, the hitting did not happen frequently, and other men were much more violent than he was. Two sides at odds with each other By informing the police and court of George’s violence, Sarah transgressed her in-laws’ code against snitching, made all the worse because she had ratted on her husband and their son/brother. George came from a large family in which his father, a chronic and heavy drinker, had committed physical and emotional violence against his wife over their entire 45 years of marriage as well as against their 14 children. Well respected by her children, George’s mother acknowledged the impact of the violence on all her family and observed that among all the children, George was most like his father. At the same time, the coordinator realized

FGDM Example  49

that George’s mother would maintain the code of silence and defend George at the conference. The two sides of the family group appeared totally at odds over what should happen. George’s side demanded that Sarah reconcile with her husband, and Sarah’s family, fiercely protective of her, wanted George out of her and their lives. They personally had been threatened by George, who had repeatedly damaged their property, and they were quite wary of his relatives, who included others, besides George, involved with correctional services. Not surprisingly, family members from both sides needed extensive preparation by the conference coordinator prior to agreeing to take part.6 These steps helped to set invitees at ease. Appealing to both sides of the family In advance of the conference, the coordinator met with the family group members to invite them to the conference and immediately introduced herself as from the university so as not to be mistaken for the two protective authorities, parole and child protection. At this time, she asked their permission to document the process and conduct post-conference interviews about their experiences of FGDM. The coordinator informed the family group that George’s parole officer had made the referral to the project in order that Sarah and George’s families could come together to develop their own plan. The aim of the plan was to keep all the family members safe. The conference purpose also included helping George stay out of trouble, something of appeal to both sides of the family. Supports for those harmed Consulting first with Sarah and then with other family members, the coordinator drew up the invitation list. On the list was George and Sarah’s older son. Rather than attending, Kevin opted to write a statement to be shared at the conference. He was assisted by a worker from the John Howard Society of NL,7 a nonprofit with the mission of advocating for penal reform. The coordinator inquired about family members’ concerns regarding the conference and any special arrangements that they wanted for taking part. In particular, she strongly recommended that Sarah choose someone to stay by her during the conference to lend emotional support and keep an eye on her safety. Sarah chose her cousin, which proved quite beneficial, including after the conference. The selected meeting place, a community center, was intended to set the family at ease by offering a more neutral setting than a government agency or family home. Family members took a hand in the preparations and arranged to provide rides for other family to the community center.

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Orienting service providers In addition to family, the coordinator reviewed with service providers their role, emphasizing that they offer information to the family group without specifying the action steps. Reach out was relatively straightforward to the child protection worker and a worker from a transition house for abused women and their children; both were quite familiar with the FGDM process. The same did not hold for the referring agency, Correctional Services of Canada, which only very recently had agreed to make referrals to the FGDM Project. Parole’s uncertainties, George’s alarm Preparations for George were stymied by the correctional system’s lack of experience with FGDM, prison rules prohibiting the coordinator from meeting in person with George, delays in securing permission for his attending the conference, and sudden reassignment of George to a different parole officer just two days out from the conference. Clearly remembering the unexpected case and with only a memo on the FGDM Project, the parole worker later told the research interviewer that he had wondered what he was getting into with such a large family group and if the conference might entail a lot of extra work. After meeting with the coordinator, he understood his role and was far more comfortable about the proceedings. George, however, needed more preparation than was made available. He not only had abbreviated and distance-only contact with the conference coordinator but an unfamiliar parole officer. On the positive side, George was able to express his unease to the coordinator. After a phone call with George, the coordinator described him as worried that everyone would pile onto him and tell him what he should do, and he would become the topic of gossip in the community. On the negative side, the drive to the conference reawakened all his fears. Escorting George to the conference, the parole officer observed that George was terrified, with no comprehension of what would be happening. Nourishing homegrown leadership Homegrown leadership to end family violence emerges out of the culture of the family. For the family group in this example, three ingredients stood out as nourishing homegrown leadership. The first two have already been identified—the determination of the woman who had been abused to proceed with the conference and the preparations leading up to the conference that set invitees more at ease. To these, a third and counterintuitive ingredient is added—correctional services making the referral. The FGDM project created an opening for Sarah to take a stance on what she and the boys needed for a better future. Given the strong feelings of her

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family toward George, Sarah found it difficult to sort through with them her ambivalence about her husband. The conference preparations helped Sarah define her position and bring her family around to supporting her wish to move forward with the conference. To sustain Sarah’s determination, her cousin was there to lend her emotional and practical assistance before, during, and after the conference. Paralleling the magic tales of Peg Bearskin, Sarah, with her cousin’s vigilant support, strategically managed family relationships to help everyone in the family. All the steps taken by the coordinator to set family group members at ease were crucial to their showing up on the day of the conference. The coordinator’s identification as an employee at the university situated her within a less threatening institution than parole or child welfare but also an authoritative sponsor of a new approach to family violence within the province. This base also served to normalize collecting data for an evaluation, and the attention paid to the participants’ views signaled their value as a source of expert knowledge. Soliciting the family group’s views on the invitations, venue, and other preparations fostered their claiming the conference as their own, rather than as belonging to the service providers or just one side of the family. An exception to prove the rule, correctional services’ policy stipulated that the parole officer monitor George outside the prison. George’s distress heading to the conference would likely have been somewhat alleviated if he could have ridden with relatives rather than the officer. Overall, though, the service providers were instructed to take a backseat and refrain from taking over. Correctional services made the referral to the FGDM Project in anticipation of George’s release from prison and granted a two-day pass so that George could stay at a correctional community center while attending the conference. By making the referral, correctional services positioned the parole officer to work with rather than against the family group’s leadership. At the same time, parole had the power to cancel the conference, which would have happened without the coordinator’s intercession. Given the timing and the referral source, George and his closely knit family were unlikely to refuse the “invitation” out of wariness that this could jeopardize George’s review by the parole board and delay his discharge. On top of this, George’s family was acutely sensitive to parole’s knowledge of other family members’ criminal convictions. Attending the conference meant breaking their cultural norm, shared with Jack of the magic tales, of staying as far from external authorities as possible to live up to their overriding norm of standing together as a family. The involvement of parole made for some cautious optimism on Sarah’s side of the family that they could take part without suffering violence from George and his relatives. Their agreeing to participate in the conference came out of a sharp awareness that a plan needed to be in place to safeguard Sarah and the boys. In other words, this was a way for Sarah’s family to abide by

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their cultural norm of standing up for family. For the two sides of the family group, especially prominent was their commitment to kinship ties, as was evident in both the male-centered and female-centered magic tales. Turning to the second narrative thread, the question is raised of whether the conference offered a forum in which all family group members could choose to express their views, regardless of familial identification, gender, and generation. Over the course of the conference, the complexity of a fourth category gained even greater salience—whether the family group members were harmed, caused harm, or both, as so often happens in families with intergenerational violence. Inclusive storytelling revealed divergent perspectives on family violence with the potential to guide decision making that works for everyone in the family.

Storytelling for hope and recovery Contradictory tension: Will attention be given to the multiplicity of perspectives in families, especially those of women and children, necessary for recovery from family violence? Weighted toward family and women After conferring with their relatives, 15 family group members accepted the invitation and arrived at the conference. The composition of those who showed up might appear to spell trouble for Sarah. The ten from George’s family outnumbered the five from Sarah’s family, two to one, and the four men all came from George’s family and included the two men known to have committed family violence, George and his father. With intergenerational family violence, however, the boundaries are often muddled between those who abuse and are abused. Among the attending members at least two-thirds (10:15) were exposed to violence in the home. Seven women (Sarah, George’s mother, and five sisters) and two men (George and a brother) had been victimized in the home. George had abused and been abused while the childhood history of his father is not known. Outside the home, George damaged the property of his in-laws, raising those targeted by family violence to nearly all (or possibly all) participating family. Of importance, the 11 women cut across both families, and the participants spanned three generations. Most were from Sarah and George’s age group. The senior generation encompassed Sarah’s mother and aunt and both of George’s parents. The youngest generation, the children, was represented by Kevin’s written statement, which might appear to be negligible but turned out to have widespread reverberations. Deliberately, the conference coordinator ensured that more family than non-family were invited. The child protection worker sent her regrets at the last minute. This left the non-family composed of the parole officer and

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the transition house worker along with two university staff—the conference coordinator and the research observer. This meant that the family group outstripped non-family nearly four to one (15:4). Those present in a professional capacity included one man and three women. Taking into account all participants, the gender ratio approached three women to every one man (14:5). Thus, numerically family and women were weighted to exert a greater influence at the conference. Leveling the field From the start, the conference was designed to level the field and set all participants on par: The coordinator made sure that everyone was seated in a circle, welcomed, and introduced. Leveling the field also meant ensuring that all participants not only had the same information about what had been worked out during the conference preparations but heard it together as a group. Fending off potential uncertainties and disagreements, the coordinator reminded the participants of the conference purpose, process, and meeting guidelines. Given the family group’s history, the consensually-derived guidelines advisedly stressed keeping what was said confidential, listening, and staying nonviolent. Professional accounts After the opening, the conference moved into the phase of information sharing, again this gave everyone equal access to the same facts as well as the opportunity to learn together. The parole officer led off with his report. In advance of the conference, the coordinator had coached the parole officer on how to present his report in a straightforward and nonjudgmental manner. The parole officer, with what he later characterized as an intently listening family group, summarized the events leading up to the referral and the areas of concern the plan needed to cover, without dictating what action steps to include. In addition, he explained how parole operated and what services his agency could offer, information that was new to many. Later in a research interview, the parole officer reflected on the family group’s response to his half-hour presentation and acknowledged that although some family had previous involvement with parole, they were not typically provided such information. After the report by parole, the shelter worker was ushered into the conference room to give a caring and clear talk about the impact of violence and substance use on women and children. While not informed about the family’s specific history, she knew her words would have an emotional impact on the listeners and directly relate to their planning on how to prevent further family violence.

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The coordinator later praised this presentation and noted its influence over how the women in George’s family viewed Sarah’s standing up for her and the boys’ interests. At this point, George’s sisters stopped pressuring Sarah to take their brother back, and his mother repeatedly expressed her wish that FGDM had been available in the past. Once the family had the opportunity to ask questions, the shelter worker left so as not to be privy to confidential information about the family. The shelter worker’s talk and parole’s report together formed the swivel for the most pivotal moment in the conference. Fathers and sons The final presentation was the coordinator’s reading Kevin’s letter aloud. In the letter, the boy put into words his terror that his father would once again be in their home and resume the violence. Kevin’s words had a profound impact. George started crying and quickly left the room but did return. As the parole officer commented afterwards to the researcher, the letter upset George, but he needed to hear how deeply he hurt others. The parole officer was astonished that George’s father came to the conference and remained there for most of the time. That his wife and children had all suffered his abuse for years raises the question of his very presence suppressing their freedom of expression. The boy’s letter released them within the circle to affirm that no child should be so terrified. Although they stopped short of explicitly denouncing the abuse committed by George or his father, his family ceased their condemnation of Sarah for calling in the police. The affirmation of Kevin set the stage for the family group moving into the next conference phase of planning together how to keep their relatives’ safe. The first part of the conference lasted three hours. Magnifying suppressed perspectives After the careful preparations, the day of the conference was structured to recognize that violence within the home is real, consequential, and wrong. As found in female narrations of Peg Bearskin, publicly identifying family violence contravened cultural norms for women. Until the conference, the perspectives of women and children in George’ family had been suppressed for decades. At the gathering, their views were magnified while at the same time strengthening family leadership over their affairs. Without this sharing, the plan might have only reinforced domination by more powerful family members, curtailed hope, and stalled the recovery of the family as a whole. As found in the NL magic tales, the conference negotiations emphasized kinship ties across the family group. These were further evident in the composition of the participants, slanted away from service providers and toward family and inclusive of three generations. The skewing toward women is not

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surprising: Taking care of family was traditionally women’s business, as Peg Bearskins could tell us. Seated in a circle, the family group faced each other and together learned what had happened. The parole officer’s report not only conveyed sensitive and confidential information but saved family members from being put on the spot to disclose what had happened. Sarah, if placed in the position of revealing the victimization, could have been subjected to embarrassment, rebuttal, and retaliation. George would have struggled to say what had happened in front of his family and the parole officer, and if he had, would probably have minimized his violence, setting himself up for a negative review by the parole board. Hearing Sarah and George’s contradictory accounts would likely have precipitated cross-family conflict. The parole officer’s report served as the “official” version and one that the family group knew they needed to consider in formulating their plan. Another account came from the second information provider, the shelter worker, who deepened understanding of family violence without prying into the family’s business and opened their ears to listen to Kevin’s letter. The power of Kevin’s letter was magnified because all the family group could identify with the youngster. Kevin did not come from one side of the family group. He was the only “participant” related to all family, and the authenticity of his story resonated because of their own exposure to family violence. The main subject of the letter—the boy’s father—was the person most visibly shaken. George’s strong emotional reaction further affirmed the truth of Kevin’s words and allowed others to access their own experiences of family violence. Returning to the tales of Jack and Peg, Kevin’s letter was a magical gift that transformed the perceptions of the adults in his life and prompted them to act as the caring family that the boy and his younger brother so desperately needed. The sharing in the first part of the conference wielded an emotional wallop. The next part of the deliberations—generating a plan—needed shock absorbers. Particularly for George’ family, the involvement of parole heightened the tension and upped their fears that the resulting FGDM plan would prove contrary to their interests. This brings in the third narrative thread about the ways in which the structure of the conference reshaped relationships and regulated participation in a manner responsive to the family group.

Regulating responsively the healing process Contradictory tension: Will government institutions sensitively adjust their responses to the strengths and circumstances of families and apply the least controls necessary to safeguard family members?

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A mix of systems The conference cannot be characterized as simply a face-off between two systems—the public authorities and the family group. Each of these systems was not uniform in perspectives as evident in the differences among the family group, and they certainly were not the only systems involved. Others already identified were a public university and publicly funded nonprofits—the John Howard Society, shelter, and community center at which the conference was held. Additionally, a local business delivered the lunch foods, ordered by the coordinator, in consultation with Sarah on the menu. Informal connecting The conference had a set arrival time but no preset end time so that participants could take the time that they thought needed. Over the course of the day, participants did not just sit in the “public” circle but also met informally outside the circle. Especially notable were the exchanges between the parole officer and the female family members. During a later interview, the officer recollected that the family group was at first quite wary about speaking with him, but after one-on-one chats over the day, they became extremely talkative with him. Getting behind sensible ideas Taking time out for lunch, the women in the family group dished out the food to family and non-family, who together chatted in a more informal setting. After 35 minutes, the family group moved into their “private time” to work out a plan for Sarah, George, and the boys. The coordinator and parole officer waited outside the room and were available on request to offer information in support of the planning process. The parole officer later remarked that the family group brought him in to answer questions about parole and their fears of tattling on George for showing up at Sarah’s home under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The officer recommended that they take immediate action, and to his astonishment, not only did they incorporate into the plan reporting George’s infractions, but George gave his consent to their contacting parole. The resulting plan included supervised visitation of George with the boys, counseling for Sarah as well as Kevin, and addiction treatment for George. Once George was released from prison, the plan specified that if he turned up at Sarah’s doorstep unannounced, Sarah would call his sisters or a brother to make sure that George left; and if George appeared intoxicated, they were to contact parole. George’s mother was designated to monitor the plan’s implementation and keep in regular contact with family members, parole, and child welfare about completion of the tasks. To reassess and, as necessary, revise the plan, the family group was to reconvene on a regular basis.

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After 1 hour and 45 minutes, the family group reached agreement on the action steps and invited the coordinator and parole officer back into the meeting room to review and approve the plan. In the coordinator’s view, the plan was quite sound, and the action steps and their funding were authorized by parole on the spot and quickly afterwards by child welfare. The total time for the conference was 4 hours and 45 minutes, the shortest time for an FGDM in the coordinator’s experience. She surmised that the brevity was due to Sarah and her cousin’s clarity about what to include in the plan and the minimal emotional expression by George’s family members, who had been numbed by years of family violence. In interviews shortly after the conference, one of George’s sisters concluded that the conference united the family to work on the issues, and another sister referred to the resulting plan as sensible strategies that they had talked about for quite some time but had not previously presented to their brother and his wife. Sarah’s cousin, while satisfied overall with conference, was still cautious, given her consciousness of George’s past abuse and capacity to trick others. Sarah voiced satisfaction with the plan (which she had basically authored) and wanted George released on parole so that they could get on with the actual work of carrying it out. She had some apprehension that George’s mother would not keep on top of monitoring the plan’s implementation. The research observer in her reflective notes anticipated that the cousin would fulfill this role. Hybridizing governance The mix of systems—a hybrid of family, public authorities, university, and community—insured that no one system on its own dictated the process and the plan. While the coordinator was responsible for convening the conference, she did not act alone. She checked first with Sarah and then with other family group members on whom to invite and where and how to hold the conference. Helping to create a family friendly milieu, the conference was held at a community center that did not belong to any one party, and the lunch prepared by a local business and dished out by female family members offered nourishment familiar to all the Newfoundland participants. As in the tale of Peg Bearskin, food had a magical property of transforming relationships for the better. Not waiting on the coordinator, much organizing happened behind the scenes. Family group members conferred on how to help each other get to the conference and supported each other at the conference. The strong presence of George’s family was likely a function of their mother, whom they respected and trusted, instructing them to be there for their brother. New to FGDM, the parole officer was receptive to the coordinator’s orientation on how he could support the family group in making their plan by: (1)

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not rescinding the referral, (2) presenting information in a clear and nonjudgmental manner, (3) not interfering in the family’s private time while being available to answer questions, and (4) immediately approving the plan and resources for carrying it out. Each of these responses served to validate the family group’s leadership and transform the relationship between the officer and the family group. Before the conference, the parole officer was disturbed at having a novel university project thrust upon him without any notification. Adding to his uncertainties, he was uncomfortable having to deal with such a large family. Over the day, the officer and family group increasingly gained confidence in working together and built the trust sufficient for eventually concurring on the plan. Of significance, the officer, backed by his agency, could act without trying to second guess what his superiors would expect. In fact, he served as the interpreter of correctional services policies to the family group. As in the tales of Jack, he became the older man who gave sage advice on how to circumvent dangers outside the home. Not once during the conference was George put on the spot to apologize for his violence. This did not mean that he was cocooned from experiencing shame as evident in his emotional outburst to Kevin’s letter and his acceptance of the action steps in the plan. Nor did the conference shame Sarah for failing to hold her family together. Instead, the shelter worker’s talk set the stage for George’s family backing off from demands that she reconcile with their son/brother. The action steps in the plan did not resort to punitive measures to control George. Instead, they tapped into the caring within the family group to intercede before he dug himself deeper into trouble and to work collaboratively with parole on his behalf. None of the plans sought to force measures on Sarah if she did not adhere to the plan. The plan was not oriented to a narrow definition of safety as defined by criminal law or child welfare policy. Instead, the plan sought to help the family gain much needed family supports and behavioral health, employment, and other resources to improve their lives overall. The final stage of FGDM was implementing the plan. According to Sarah’s cousin, George played tricks and might appear to go along with the plan while he worked to undermine it. The unanticipated event (the “trick”) for the family group and service providers, however, came from the Parole Board, not George. Contrary to all their expectations, George was not released early and was required to remain in prison for two-thirds of his sentence, followed by one-third on parole. This meant that he was discharged from prison over 15 months after the conference was held. Nevertheless, the parole officer stressed that the conference was time well spent because it showed George that others cared about him and would help him keep out of trouble. George’s continuation in prison, however, meant that the time-limited project was unable to reconvene the conference on his discharge and had a truncated period in which to assess developments once he was back in the

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community. The fourth and last narrative thread concerns how the momentum from the conference was sustained and cascaded further changes benefiting the family.

Cascading trust and nonviolence Contradictory tension: Will trusting and nonviolent cascades increase their momentum, volume, and multi-directionality over the long-term and generate lasting change? Out of contact Close on the heels of the conference, Sarah and her in-laws, the research interviewer learned, had a dispute unrelated to the conference. No longer in touch, George’s family was not available to monitor or assist with the plan. This also meant that they were not threatening Sarah if she did not reunite with George. Doing well The determined Sarah persisted with components of the plan. With George in prison, she moved swiftly ahead with job training and abuse counseling. Impressed, her child welfare worker iterated that Sarah was making good progress and much more self-confident. The worker summed up the boys as likewise moving forward and observed that Kevin was no longer scared of his father but continued to be concerned for his mother if George returned to their home. After completing a child development instrument with Sarah, the research interviewer concluded that the boys were making some progress and Sarah was faring quite well. Smartening up While incarcerated, George telephoned Sarah and the boys each weekend and regularly wrote letters, and once released, he began dropping in on Sarah, something to which she did not object. She explained to the research interviewer that the conference got the issues into the open and improved how she and George related. In her view, the FGDM led to George’s smartening up: he was moving ahead with plans to return to school and overall was calmer and keeping his temper under control. Critical impact, new directions The conference preparations and gathering were small as measured in time but critical in their impact. Post-conference, Sarah, George, and their sons all

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made notable progress, as confirmed by Sarah, the child welfare worker, and the research interviewer. The immediate family members regrouped after the parole board ruled out early release for George, and they followed through on some aspects of the original plan. Arguably, George’s extended period in prison gave Sarah the wherewithal to move ahead with her career plans and with her and the sons’ healing from years of abuse. Possibly the continuation of imprisonment gave George the opportunity to deal with his substance use and to plan on furthering his academic credentials. While incarcerated, George did not have access to his sons through supervised visitation. His persistence in phoning and writing his family may have lessened Kevin’s fear of his father but also kept alive worries on behalf of his mother. The longer incarceration, however, delayed what Sarah had characterized as the actual work of implementing the plans. She had wanted to test whether George would respect the rules on keeping his distance from her home, especially if under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Because of the disagreement with George’s family, she could not have called on them to assist. Although she could have turned to parole, this appeared unlikely given how she accepted George’s unannounced visits once he was back in the community. More positively, the dispute served another purpose. It weakened the links with her in-laws, who had opposed Sarah’s shutting herself and the boys off from their son or brother. This may have reassured Kevin, who continued to be quite protective of his mother. At the same time as these bonds attenuated, Sarah was freed to connect to outside services—job training and abuse counseling. These services promoted her self-sufficiency and self-confidence and opened doors to new directions in her life. Like Peg Bearskin, Sarah’s prospects improved once contact was cut with her in-laws (aka witch), and while remaining loyal to family, she applied her ingenuity to transforming familial relationships. Whereas Peg Bearskin had to resort to magic to become the loved wife of her prince, Sarah reached outside the family and cultural network to programs unavailable to Peg in her outport community or for that matter to George’s mother. George’s mother, married around the time that NL joined Canada in 1949, was tied down by a husband who abused her and all their 14 children. Her cultural community would have frowned upon her working outside the home and would have expected her to avoid any public disclosure of the family violence. Tellingly, the first NL shelter for abused women and their children was founded in 1981, well after her children were born. The shelter emerged out of feminist alliances that defamiliarized family violence as they advocated for women’s right to control their bodies, live free of abuse, and gain economic resources to support themselves and their families. These alliances brought together women’s advocates with looser bonds than in primary groupings of family and cultural networks, and, thus, more flexibility to adopt new ideas.

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As one of the shelter’s founders, I recollect that in its early days, the site in St. John’s of the transition house and the neighboring John Howard Society was disparagingly referred to as the “prostitutes and cons’ hill.”8 Today, the shelter, now called “Iris Kirby House,” is well established and annually provides a wide range of programming to hundreds of women and their children.9 I wish there was more information available about what happened to the family group over the long term. Did a lengthier stay in prison only rigidify George’s norms of masculinity that to survive, men must dominate those around them and that other men were much more violent than he was? Would prison socialization and a record for a man of little education and low means restrict George’s livelihood options to criminal activities and lead to further incarceration? On returning to the community, would George play tricks and reverse Sarah’s newfound autonomy and the boys’ greater sense of safety? Or countering such tricks, would Sarah’s links to external groups reinforce her and the sons’ gains? As George reconnected to Sarah and the sons, would he maintain his commitment to sobriety and expand his noncriminal career options? Not intoxicated or high, would George no longer intimidate Sarah’s relatives, who could better lend support to her and the boys? What appeared to be a truce between George’s family and Sarah be preserved, or better yet, reconfigured into friendlier relationships? What impact did the conference have on George’s family applying the sensible ideas in the FGDM plan to their own households? Did the conference alter how parole, child welfare, and women’s organizations responded not only to this family but to other ones as well? The hope is that the conference gave both sides of the family the knowledge and resources to scout out and possibly take new directions in their lives. One good omen was that unlike George with his own father, Kevin rejected his dad’s violent expression of masculinity and, in his letter, took a clear stance against family violence in front of both sides of the family. His authentic storytelling was “inherently revolutionary” and portends ripples, cascading trust and nonviolence into the future. These cascades are how feminist kin-making extends affinities and collaborative action well beyond the family and local community.

Some further questions The NL tales of magic offered a cultural framework for discerning patterns in how the F. family conferenced about family violence. The FGDM example revealed the strengths of endogenous norms of loyalty to family and kin that pushed the family group to participate in a novel and challenging gathering. The developments over the course of the conference and its aftermath demonstrated how the process tentatively began to integrate exogenous views of the rights of women and children into their family group’s cultural practices.

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The four narrative threads or storylines about a restorative approach to upend family violence were tested against one family group’s experience. Elements of each narrative thread were teased out of the example. A major question remains as to whether the involvement of federal and provincial authorities lessened fulfillment of the goals embedded in each narrative thread. Without parole and child welfare involved, would the family group have been able to exert even greater leadership, express more fulsomely their convergences and divergences in views, responsively manage their own affairs, and ally with others to spark feminist kin-making beyond their own family and community? What is demanded is attending closely to those harmed—not only Sarah and her sons but also all those whose lives were stunted by family violence— and determining together what external interventions are critical to individual and collective rights to safety, caring, dignity, and belonging. Intentionally, the FGDM story focused on the conference and was pulled from the coordinator’s reflective notes and the researcher’s observational notes and post-conference interviews. These data sources kept the family group and their conference front and center but closed off exploration of the larger social-economic-political context of the FGDM Project. Chapter 3 takes up the question of what made it possible for NL to be the first Canadian province to apply the NZ model of FGC for care and protection and to use this model specifically for gendered and intergenerational violence. The importance of recognizing culture and local organizing is set forth as well as developing a system of responsive regulation to support family and community leadership.

Notes



1. The identity of the family has been masked to safeguard their privacy. The names of the family members have been altered in this story. 2. Peg Bearskin has parallels with the Irish folktales of the hairy heroine (Halpert & Widdowson, 1996, p. 223). 3. In Power’s version, they are searching for employment. Brewer did not specify why they left home. 4. An updated version of the story overturns gender norms on women’s appearance: Here the prince becomes as ugly as Peg, much to their mutual happiness (Brewer, Dinn, & Jones, 2003/2019). 5. See Implementation Report, Vol. I, Tables 4.5 and 4.17 (Pennell & Burford, 1995). 6. The steps for organizing and convening a conference in situations of family violence are set forth in the project’s manual (Burford, Pennell, & MacLeod, 1995) and shown in action in two videos based on experience with conferencing over the course of the FGDM project (Burford & Pennell, 1998b; Burford & Pennell, 1999). All these materials can be freely downloaded. 7. John Howard was an 18th-century English penal reformer who carefully documented the insufferable conditions in European prisons and the injustice of jailers imposing fees before releasing those imprisoned, even if the courts determined

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their innocence. In 1866, the Howard League for Penal Reform was founded in his name. The John Howard Society of NL was established in 1951, two decades before the initiation of the FGDM Project. 8. “Cons” was short for convicts. 9. Iris Kirby House. (2015). Programs & services. Retrieved June 25, 2021, from https:// www.iriskirbyhouse.ca/index.php/programs-services/.

References Bavington, D. (2010). Managed annihilation: An unnatural history of the Newfoundland cod collapse. Vancouver, BC, CA: UBC Press. Best, A., Greenhill, P., & Lovelace, M. (2019). Introduction. In A. Best, P. Greenhill, M. Lovelace (Eds., Illus. Blair, G.), Clever maids, fearless Jacks, and a cat: Fairy tales from a living oral tradition (pp. 3–20). Logan, UT, US: Utah State University Press. Brewer, E., Dinn, P., & Jones, A.(2003/2019). Peg Bearskin: A traditional Newfoundland tale (Illus. Gallagher, D.). Tors Cove, NL, CA: Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides. Burford, G., & Pennell, J. (1998b). Widening the circle: The family group decision making experience. Video prepared by the Centre for Academic & Media Services, Memorial University of Newfoundland for Health Canada, Family Violence Prevention Unit. Hull, QC, CA: Minister of Public Works and Government Services. Available at https://linney.mun.ca/pages/view.php?ref=10099&k= Burford, G., & Pennell, J. (1999). Saputjinik (Healing each other): An Inuit family deals with domestic violence. Video prepared by the Centre for Academic & Media Services, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and the OkâlaKatigêt Society, Nain, NL, CA. Inuttitut version, available at https://linney.mun.ca/pages/view.php?ref=42241&k= English version, available at https://linney.mun.ca/pages/view.php?ref=40449&k= Burford, G., Pennell, J., & MacLeod, S. (1995, August). Manual for coordinators and communities: The organization and practice of family group decision making (revised). St. John’s, NL, CA: Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work. Available at https://go.ncsu.edu/fgdm Delisle, J. (2013). The Newfoundland diaspora: Mapping the literature of out-migration. Waterloo, ON, CA: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Halpert, H., & Widdowson, J. D. A. (1996). Folktales of Newfoundland: The resilience of the oral tradition (Vol. I). New York, NY, US, & London, UK: Garland. Handcock, G. (2000). English settlement. St. John’s, NL, CA: Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Website. Retrieved October 9, 2021, from www.heritage.nf.ca  › articles  › society › settlement Korneski, K. (2020). Cosmopolitan engagements: Class, place and diplomacy in the Gulf of St. Lawrence fisheries, 1815–1854. In K. Kehoe & M. Vance (Eds.), Reappraisals of British colonisation in Atlantic Canada, 1700–1930 (pp. 154–170). Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Lindahl, C. (2001). Introduction: Representing and recovering the British- and IrishAmerican märchen: Perspectives on the Jack tales and other North American märchen. Journal of Folklore Research, 38(1–2), 7–67. Lovelace, M. (2001). Jack and his masters: Real worlds and tale worlds in Newfoundland folktales. Journal of Folklore Research, 38(1/2), 149–170.

64  FGDM Example Mannion, J. J. (2000). The Irish in Newfoundland. St. John’s, NL, CA: Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Website. Retrieved September 1, 2021, from www.heritage.nf.ca/ society/irish_newfoundland.html Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (1995). Family group decision making: New roles for “old” partners in resolving family violence: Implementation report (Vol. I–II). St. John’s, NL, CA: Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work. Available at https://go.ncsu. edu/fgdm Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (2000b). Family group decision making and family violence. In G. Burford & J. Hudson (Eds.), Family group conferencing: New directions in community-centered child and family practice (pp. 171–185). Hawthorne, NY, US: Aldine de Gruyter. Shannon, F., Sasse, A., Sheridan, H., & Heinrich, M. (2017). Are identities oral? Understanding ethnobotanical knowledge after Irish independence (1937-1939). Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 13(1), 1–19. doi: 10.1186/s13002-017-0189-0. Tye, D., & Greenhill, P. (2020). Foodways as transformation in “Peg Bearskin”: The magical and the realistic in an oral tale. Narrative Culture, 7(1), 98–118. Widdowson, J. (2009). Folktales in Newfoundland oral tradition: Structure, style, and performance. Folklore, 120(1), 19–35.

Chapter 3

FGDM Project Planning— Local Organizing, Emergent Responsive Regulation

I never heard of the Women’s Movement before…. And when [the Women’s Council] moved down there to the (Women’s) Centre…. it was like a really, really comfortable home. – Rita, age 40, Stephenville, western NL, 1992/1993 (George, 1997, p. 248)

At home Rita, previously unaware of the Women’s Movement, felt at home at the Women’s Centre. The center sheltered women and housed the Bay St. George Status of Women Council.1 It was a place of feminist activity that exuded a culture putting Rita at ease. This was exactly the milieu within which local organizers could honor families’ cultures while working to counter family violence: the intent of the FGDM Project. The Bay St. George region encompassed the town of Stephenville, the local employment and administrative hub, and a series of small communities, including those dotting the Port au Port Peninsula. In the fall of 1992, I was invited by organizations on the peninsula and in town to discuss the FGDM model. These discussions were intended to inform their decision on whether to serve as one of the three project sites. The other two sites were an Inuit community and the provincial capital. Although not intentional, these sites were at nearly the most geographically distant points in a province with an extensive land mass.2 The rural Port au Port Peninsula was on the West Coast of the island, and the drive across the island to Stephenville from the city of St. John’s on the East Coast was 770 kilometers (478 miles), necessitating most project travel by airplane. These flights were often quite choppy because of high winds. The Inuit community of Nain approached 10 degrees latitude above the other two sites and was the most northly permanent settlement in Labrador. With no roads into Nain, we reached this community first by flying across the Strait of Belle Isle to Happy Valley-Goose Bay and from there, changing over to a small plane to fly north along the coast. DOI: 10.4324/9781003105374-3

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Meeting on the three sites’ home grounds was one way of demonstrating respect for their local ways of organizing. Emerging out of the sites’ quite disparate cultural, economic, and political histories were the sites’ distinct forms of local organizing: helping out on the Port au Port Peninsula; Inuit specific, Inuit women led in Nain; and state engagement in St. John’s.

Shaped by cultural context The provincial child welfare director provided a small grant so that we could develop our proposal to the Canadian government. His receptivity to the FGDM model was fueled by a keen awareness of the dearth of resources for child and adult survivors who had been victimized in the home and by the dire necessity of the Department of Social Services working with families at a time when reports of child abuse and neglect and sexual offences had risen sharply (Hebert & Seymour, 1995). The increased reporting was fallout from the intense publicity concerning sexual abuse by Catholic priests and brothers and the cover-up by the provincial department of justice, as documented by the Winter Commission (Archdiocesan Commission of Enquiry into the Sexual Abuse of Children by Members of the Clergy, 1990) and the Hughes Commission (Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Response of the Newfoundland Criminal Justice System to Complaints, 1991). Most significant was “the readiness of communities and government in the 1980s and 1990s to hear the pain caused by years of abuse and to make changes happen on behalf of those who had been victimized” (C. Hebert, personal communication, November 9, 2021). The provincial seed funding supported travel to the three sites and constructing a federal proposal shaped by their input. The hope was that diverse communities would test and remake a model from Aotearoa New Zealand to fit their own context.3 They each received well the main message that FGDM was intended to respect the culture of families in their communities and encourage local alliances of women’s organizations, government agencies, Indigenous associations, religious bodies, academics, and other groups to counter family violence. Although the three sites used different models of local organizing, they were alike in advocating for and obtaining government funding for their work, thus, differing from the radical feminist strategy urged in the US and Toronto where the aim was to remain independent of state control (Rankin & Vickers, 1998). In turn, the project sites endorsed seeking federal funding for the FGDM Project.

National feminist contentions The federal Family Violence Initiative, to which the proposal was directed, had stirred controversy among Canadian feminists. They objected to the Conservative Government in Ottawa de-gendering violence against

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women by using terms such as family violence rather than woman abuse (Monkman, 1988) and recasting the abuse as individual incidents of crime (Gotell, 1998). Majority feminists saw the symbolic value of framing violence against women as a crime and, thus, morally reprehensible, and found that mobilizing criminal sanctions was “relatively easy” (Currie, 1993, p. 18, cited in Gotell, 1998, p. 46). As feminist historians (Kealey & Sanger, 1989) have repeatedly documented, “state policies have responded to women’s demands … when these demands could be reformulated in ways that suited the politics of the state” (p. 12). Feminists identified that the government’s trend toward criminalization yielded a discourse of helpless victims and culpable offenders and obscured the larger social context of oppression out of which the violation emerged (Pitch, 1990). These analyses were part of a wider feminist critique of the “leaner and meaner state” that would undo Canadian social welfare essential to women and children’s well-being and that would invoke law and order to regulate and punish people who were of color, Indigenous, LGBTQ, dis(abled), poor, or immigrant (Brodie, 1998, p. 24). In the 1990s, the NL province was severely affected by reductions in federal transfer payments under Conservative and then Liberal governments, seeking to cutback the welfare state and, this retrenchment of public programming undermined the well-being of women and children. Piled on top was the imposition of the cod fishing moratorium in 1992 on which the already fragile provincial economy heavily depended, resulting in massive unemployment and outmigration for work (Bavington, 2010).

Community decision The fishing moratorium commenced in the year just prior to the start of the FGDM Project. In this economic climate, it was even more crucial for project sites to determine whether to undertake the project at a time when they were facing so many demands in their communities. The early project planning, described in this chapter, created a space in which “formal and informal community leaders and those who had an established reputation in local ‘anti-violence’ efforts” not only held the “final say” over whether their community would take part in the project but how the work would unfold.4 This chapter begins by looking first at local organizing in two sites—the Port au Port Peninsula and Nain—with which Gale Burford and I were less familiar at the outset and then St. John’s, where we lived and worked. Because Gale was in NZ at the time, I undertook the initial outreach to the communities. For each site, the type of local organizing is placed within the history of the region and the changing roles of women. Evident in the lead-in to the project was the emergence of systems of responsive regulation, supporting family and community leadership.

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Port au Port Peninsula Local organizing: Helping out As documented by the anthropologist Glenis George (1997) on her 1992– 1993 field trip, the Bay St. George Women’s Centre displayed “quilts and white lace curtains, sewn and donated by Francophone women from ‘the Cape’” along with a “poster of Nellie McClung” (p. 248). The “Cape” or, to use the French, Cap St-Georges was at the very tip of the Port au Port Peninsula and home to francophone and Indigenous Mi’kmaw residents. The peninsula was the only officially bilingual (French-English) part of the province. During my first visit to the Port au Port Peninsula, I stayed at the home of francophone hosts, who with much animation shared stories about their history, community, and music, seamlessly switching between French and English, when my French faltered. Strikingly, the quilts and lace curtains by the Cap St-Georges women were juxtaposed with the image of Nellie McClung. In the early 20th century, McClung was a White Canadian suffragette,5 politician, and maternal feminist who believed that male-dominated politics and international warmongering would be cleansed by the entry of Anglo-Saxon, middle-class women’s values of family and home into the public sphere (Black, 1989). The agenda of the maternal feminists’ national “housecleaning” included scouring men’s sexual violence and general disrespect of women (Valverde, 1991, pp. 28–30). At the end of the 20th century, the Women’s Council shared the maternal feminists’ aims but within their grassroots’ framework of cultural inclusion and egalitarianism. Central to their stance was offering “a place, not simply an organization” (George, 2000, p. 91). This meant that women, like Rita, with little or no participation in either the paid workforce or social movements could use their “helping out” skills, honed in their kinship networks and volunteer work at church or local centers (George, 2000, p. 51). Economic changes and the status of women Neighborly assistance and informal economic exchanges were crucial to survival, especially after the closure in 1961 of the US Air Force base. The base had provided jobs to English-speaking, White men and women in the Stephenville environs during and following World War II and transformed the town and the peninsula from primarily francophone to anglophone speakers (Clarke, 2010). The main paid employment was in the fishery and lumber and male-oriented make-work projects that provided sufficient weeks of employment to render the workers eligible for unemployment insurance. Single mothers relied heavily on the more stigmatized social assistance payments that subjected them to surveillance, with the threat of financial penalties for cohabitation.

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The economic shifts reduced the importance of home activities to which women were primarily dedicated and concomitantly undermined women’s status and made them vulnerable to impoverishment and abuse (Christiansen-Ruffman, 1979; National Council of Welfare, Canada, 1979). Of incorporated Canadian communities, the Port au Port Peninsula came second from the bottom in family income (Government of Newfoundland, 1995), and only 20% of adults had completed high school (Hall, LeRoy, & Fenwick, 1992). Reflecting their economic and cultural peripheralization, the French and Mi’kmaq lived out on the furthest reaches of the peninsula. They intermarried, commonly spoke French, belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, and were disparagingly referred to as “ jakatars,”6 a label with multiple, all-­negative, local interpretations (Robinson, 2014, p. 387). The label ended up sticking to the entire region. With the Mi’kmaq forced to adapt to a wage-based economy, they lost traditions that had esteemed and supported women, such as providing pregnant women with the best meat of the hunt. As the Women’s Centre participants applied their helping-out skills with other women, they leveled status distinctions between the Catholic francophones and Protestant anglophones in the region and gained confidence in taking part in personal and social transformation. Even though the center was affiliated with other NL women’s centers and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the issues that they chose to take on, such as reproductive rights and sexual violence, emerged out of the experiences of women living in their area. Local management of visits Each of my visits to the peninsula was orchestrated by local organizations. During my first visit to the Port au Port Peninsula, I was invited to speak at a large public forum hosted by Bishop O’Reilly, a Catholic high school. Afterwards, community members and government officials agreed to take part in the project, which they viewed as “in line with their general initiatives to develop the region through a community-based approach.” 7 They identified, though, that I needed to return to enlarge the community’s understanding of the model, and they were quite resourceful in figuring out how to finance a return trip (which the provincial seed funding could no longer support). Social Services arranged a donated seat from a local airline; the Presentation Sisters accommodated my stay at their convent in Port au Port East; and once again the Catholic high school provided the meeting space for large forums, first during the day with students and then in the evening with their mothers. A community representative spoke on gender equity, which led to my presentation on FGDM to stop family violence.

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Helping out and family violence Without local coordination of my schedule, I would have lost out on gaining youth perspectives on the model. To this day, I remember the thoughtful faces of the high school students as they processed the model. Later summarizing the discussion, I concluded that “the young people were generally favourable about the model but raised some cautions.”8 A common theme was that “people will come to the conference because they care about their families.” In other words, they would be there to help their kin out. Some students, however, voiced uncertainty about bringing family networks together to discuss gendered and intergenerational violence, an attitude that the Women’s Centre was attempting to dispel through public education and consciousness raising. Students questioned whether people would “feel too ashamed to talk with their family about family violence.” As in the telling of the fairytale Peg Bearskin (see Chapter 2), NL women traditionally were to refrain from disclosing such violation in public forums. An even deeper reservation, carefully expressed, was that FGDM was a “way to put the male abuser on the spot.” Here the underlying concern was that conferencing would undermine the authority of fathers. What proved instrumental in gaining traction for FGDM on the Port au Port Peninsula was the endorsement by the Catholic Church. In advance of the start of conferencing, priests from the pulpit urged families to take part. Catholic support and symbolism were woven throughout conferencing on the Port au Port Peninsula from the nun who served as support person to the large Catholic bible on which participants chose to swear that they would maintain confidentiality of what was shared at the conference. By helping out, family groups and their cultural community made conferencing work for them.

Nain Local organizing: Inuit-specific, Inuit women led Among the Labrador Inuit, the loss of Indigenous children and youth to residential schools, foster care, and suicide centralized their importance to gender justice (National Task Force on Suicide in Canada, 1989; Pauktuutit (Inuit Women’s Association), 1991) and the well-being of children was inextricably linked to that of their mothers. An Inuit woman interviewed by the Labrador Inuit Health Commission (LIHC) explained, “When a woman is abused—she can’t be a mother—she can’t look after herself let alone the children” (Kemuksigak, 1992, p. 14). Inuit women have experienced exceptionally high rates of sexual assault and domestic violence with few government services available to meet their needs for safety, health, housing, and food (Pauktuutit (Inuit Women’s Association), 1990, 2019; Town Council of

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Nain, 1993). In response, the Nain Women’s Group, formed in 1978, established a shelter for abused women and their children and a daycare center. Historically, Inuit women and men had separate spheres of authority and autonomy: the home for women and outside the home for men (Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada. (1989, Rev. 2006). Decision making was characteristically consensual, with the emphasis on noninterference in others’ affairs. As explicated by Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada (1989, Rev. 2006), “her traditional primary authority within the home has helped give Inuit women the confidence and tenacity necessary to take such an active and productive role” in public life (p. 28). Today, Inuit women are urging their full participation in politics and the economy and identify the necessity of safety, health, and economic services to achieve this goal (Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, 2016). Significantly, the very first recommendation of Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada (2019) on stopping gender-based violence was to “develop violence intervention, prevention and healing strategies that are Inuit-specific, led by Inuit women, and respond to the unique cultural, political, economic, social and historical context of Inuit Nunangat”9 (p. 102). It was this Inuit-specific, gender inclusive strategy, elevating the voices of Inuit women, that was advocated in the 1990s for the FGDM Project in Nain. Healing each other After the FGDM Project concluded, Nain leaders forcefully insisted on creating a video about conferencing in their community. Making their own FGDM video was precipitated by viewing a St. John’s rendition of conferencing,10 which they considered much too stiff and ill-depicting their approach. Their Inuk video was scripted and filmed in Nain, and local actors played a family group struggling with family violence. The family requested that a well-trusted elder speak at the conference. The title of the video was derived from his words. The discussion notes, prepared with Fran Williams, Director of the OkâlaKatigêt Society,11 explain: The family has asked that a respected community elder outside their family be invited to talk with them. Paulos Maggo, playing himself, tells how families solved problems in earlier times. His message is that they can work together to heal themselves and each other; hence the title of the video project Saputjinik [which translates as “Healing Each Other”]. (Burford, Pennell, & Williams, 1998, p. 5) During the elder’s presentation, historic photographs of the Labrador Inuit are shown because “the actors and other local people who participated in the

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making of the video wanted … to give viewers a ‘feel’ of what it meant to them to have this elder come to a conference to give information to them” (Burford et al., 1998, p. 5).12 Maggo’s talk, reinforced by the grandmothers and grandfather in the family group, redirected planning to reclaiming their language and traditional practices associated with the sea and land. At the end of video, the family group is seen heading out on ski-doos: The family is leaving for one month to go to the camping ground where [the mother’s] family has traditionally hunted and fished. Their hopes are consolidated by the grandfather’s final comment to the social worker when translated: “Sometimes you got to go back to move forward.” (Burford et al., 1998, p. 7) Paolos Maggo spoke at the 10th Inuit Studies Conference in 1996 on “The Role of Traditional Knowledge in Stopping Family Violence through Family and Community Group Conferences in Nain, Labrador” (Burford, Pennell, Williams, & Maggo, 1996). At the conference, Paolos Maggo stated that FGDM was “a step in the right direction” and further explained that times change and practices need to change with them. The invitation to Paolos Maggo to speak at the FGDM and Inuit conference recognized him as an expert on traditional knowledge that was flexible and relevant to contemporaneous conditions (see Martin, 2009). The guidance of Inuit elders was critical to Inuit communities along the Labrador coast in their negotiations to create the Inuit Settlement Region of Nunatsiavut whose administrative center is in Nain. Our beautiful land Nunatsiavut means “Our Beautiful Land” in Inuttitut (Labrador Inuktitut) and encompasses five Labrador Inuit communities.13 The Inuit and their ancestors harvested, hunted, and fished for thousands of years in this area (Natcher, Felt, & Procter, 2012). The influx in the 18th century of Moravian missionaries led to forced settlement of the Labrador Inuit and upset their nomadic and communal way of life. The later placement of Inuit children into residential schools deepened the heart-wrenching pain (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2015). After NL’s entry into Canada, government health and social services were withdrawn from Inuit in northern communities and compelled their relocation away from their traditional means of subsistence and led to their impoverishment. In 1973, the Labrador Inuit Association was established to “improve the health and well-being of our people; protect our Constitutional, democratic and human rights; and advance Labrador Inuit claims” (Nunatsiavut Government, 2021).

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In the wake of the nickel-copper mine development in Voisey Bay near Nain, land claims negotiations accelerated among the Labrador Inuit Association, Canadian government, and NL government. The negotiations resulted in the formation in 2005 of Nunatsiavut, the first fully self-­ governing Inuit region in the country. This accomplishment stands out given that when NL joined Canada in 1949, no special recognition was accorded to First Peoples and First Nations in the new province, a significant departure from arrangements made with Indigenous peoples elsewhere in the country. The lengthy Nunatsiavut constitution is unique in Canada: “The constitution recognizes and enhances the role of women in Nunatsiavut society and politics to an extent far beyond provisions in other self-government constitutions” (White, 2021, p. 111). The constitution stipulates that “Labrador Inuit men and women are equal in rights, freedoms and dignity” (Part 1.1.3 (k)) and makes provisions for the inclusion of women in the government’s legislature and committees. According to Part 5.15.2, the legislative assembly is required to undertake “reasonable efforts … to make all decisions … by consensus of the members,” thus, including women. Especially of note is the proclamation (Part 2.4.7) that “every Labrador Inuk has the right to bodily and psychological integrity, which includes the right: (a) to make personal decisions concerning reproduction; (b) to security within and control over his or her body.” Land as healer Interviews with Inuit residents in the five Nunatsiavut communities unanimously pointed to the land as their “‘healer’, ‘teacher’, ‘connector’ and ‘kin’…. [that] both shape[d] and reinforce[d] pathways for good wellbeing” of “cultural revitalization,” “relationship-building,” and “generating a strong sense of community” (Sawatsky, Cunsolo, Harper, Shiwak, & Wood, 2019, p. 228). The healthcare professionals observed that “everybody’s different when they’re on the land together,” and “there’s no talk of addictions, there’s no talk of violence, there’s no talk of suicide… none of those words don’t even exist” (Sawatsky et al., 2019, p. 231). In Saputjinik, this same healing reconnection to the land was sought as the family group headed out with joyful anticipation to their maternal camping grounds. Multilayered consensual decision to participate The Nain community’s agreement to take part in the FGDM Project was in keeping with the Inuit tradition of consensual decision making. My first visit to Nain in the fall of 1992 was organized by local leadership, in particular, from the OkâlaKatigêt Society and Labrador Inuit Health Commission (LIHC). On this occasion and other times in Nain, I stayed at local homes

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where I was oriented to the community. My meetings with community representatives were described as follows in the project’s Implementation Report: She met representatives of the Inuit and professional communities, including child welfare and RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police]. The professional groups agreed that they supported the project but left the decision to participate with the Inuit community. At the meeting with the Church Elders and Nain Women’s Group, an Inuktitut-English [interpreter] was present and consensus was reached to participate in the project. The elders stated that they saw the project as a way of returning to the old ways in which the family, rather than the Department of Social Services, made the decision over their children. (p. 13) A second stage of approval concerning the research occurred early in 1994 when the Labrador Inuit Association requested that Gale Burford and I meet with the Health Sub-Committee. The group recounted extremely damaging encounters with researchers in the past and set forth requirements for the FGDM Project’s evaluation plan and reporting. After very careful questioning, the committee reached agreement on approving the project and research.

St. John’s Local organizing: State engagement On a deep-water harbor, St. John’s is the most eastern city in Canada, one of the oldest European-settled cities in North America, and probably the foggiest. Drawn by the fishing grounds, the English began to settle in the 17th century on the Avalon Peninsula where St. John’s is located and were followed by the Irish (Handcock, 2000; Mannion, 2000). Today, the population is relatively homogeneous: overwhelmingly of English and Irish descent, born on the island, and anglophone (Clarke, 2010). The main division has been along religious lines with separate school systems for the Catholics and various Protestant sects until the denominational system was voted out at the end of the 1990s (Higgins, 2011). The St. John’s metropolitan area is by far the most populous in the province at 40% of the inhabitants. It is the seat of the provincial government and NL’s economic, political, religious, social, and educational hub. In this context, project organizing could not have succeeded without involving provincial authorities in supporting the project. In large measure, the local organizing effort can be characterized as state engagement, which had been skillfully applied by feminists in the capital city for other initiatives. In the 1990s, Rankin and Vickers (1998) observed that while at the time NL feminists had only limited success at the ballot box in electing provincial politicians, their “activism blended local projects with a sophisticated

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femocrat [feminist bureaucrat] project” (p. 360). The term femocrat was coined in Australia to refer to feminists appointed to government positions, and these office holders interconnected with community activists to push forward policies of benefit to women (Sawer, 1990). Femocrat had a somewhat negative connotation of a career feminist, and often the preferred term became state feminism, including in Canada (Findlay, 2015). The effectiveness of state feminism depended on a political climate supportive of feminist demands (Madison & Jung, 2008). In St. John’s, feminists in the community interconnected with allies in provincial and municipal bureaucracies, and the focus of this state engagement solidified around addressing sexual and family violence. Receptivity in the municipality to the New Zealand model reflected the previously mentioned heightened public concern about child sexual and physical abuse and eroding trust in religious and government institutions. Most visible in the provincial capital was the rapid closure and razing of Mount Cashel Boys Home along a well-traveled city road. This erasure of a previously iconic institution came after renewed complaints in 1989 against the Christian Brothers for years of abuse against their young wards, and sale of the Mount Cashel property was one means of compensating those who had been victimized. Beyond disillusionment with religious and government authorities was a growing awareness of the limitations of criminal law and child welfare in redressing abuse in residential settings and homes. Women’s precarity In the first half of the 20th century (pre-confederation with Canada), the upper class and small middle class in the capital consisted of the fish merchants, business owners, government officials, and some professionals. The economy revolved around resource extractive industries, in particular the fishery, and centralized men’s labor even though women were crucial to production. Law, policy, church, and social taboo all worked to keep women in precarious conditions and prevent them from leaving abusive husbands or partners. Once married, women were precluded from many sources of employment, and this discrimination continued through the 1970s in the civil service and teaching professions (Cullum & Porter, 2014). After World War I, the socially elite women, whose time was freed up by domestic servants, engaged in voluntary work with the agenda of instilling, middle-class family values of selfhelp, with little attention to women’s actual circumstances in the outports and among the urban poor (Cullum, 2014). To eradicate slum conditions, St. John’s in the 1940s began to invest in public housing, premised on a male-head of household, and this investment laid the foundation for the city having more public housing per capita than in the rest of Canada (Sharpe, 2005; Strong-Boag, 1991). A 1983 study of

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housing for women leaving abusive relationships concluded that because St. John’s had one of the greatest vacancy rates for cities in the country, the issue was not a lack of housing but instead what was available for women on their own and with few resources (Hebert & Foley, 1997). Confederation with Canada in 1949 introduced federal health, education, and welfare benefits, and the monthly family allowance for each child (aka baby bonus), provided directly to the mother, was the first cash funds available to most women in the province (Wright, 2003). Nevertheless, NL lagged other provinces in income and employment levels. Government policies forced resettlement from outport communities to urban centers, including St. John’s, where many were unable to find employment and had to return to their home communities. The impact on single mothers was compounded by the province having the lowest social assistance payments in Canada and the most interventionist child welfare strategy of placing children in provincial care (Durst, 1994). Bridging A small grant in 1973 from the federal government permitted the Newfoundland (later St. John’s) Status of Women Council to establish the first women’s center in the province (Higgins, 2012). Based in the capital, the center offered women’s services and community education. Unlike most other nongovernmental organizations of the time, the center was deliberately placed outside the church and under feminist auspices. Spun off from the center was the first NL transition house for abused women and their children, whose doors opened in 1981, a decade after the earliest feminist-oriented shelters were launched in Canada (Hebert & Foley, 1997). I was first a volunteer at the women’s center and then a member of the transition house’s founding committee and later its board of directors. The organizational system of the transition house served as an exemplar influencing the project planning and structure. To fit within the service system of the area and meet funding requirements, the shelter adopted a “cooperative-but-hierarchical structure” (Pennell, 1987, p. 115). This meant that the board of directors held fiscal responsibility for the program while decision making flowed through all program levels, an organizational type which I later conceptualized as democratic hierarchy in my doctoral dissertation (Pennell, 1990). Experience with constructing this configuration shaped feminist thinking on the process for negotiating the FGDM Project and then its operational structure. Those of us with one foot in the social work field and the other foot in feminist activism often served as a bridge between the differing perspectives of the two communities. These involvements helped to build a foundation of trust that served us all well in engaging with provincial departments about the FGDM Project. Later a key feminist in the community endorsed me as

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“one of us,” who could be counted on to attend to women’s interests in the conferencing model. Expanding project discussions In 1990, Gale began informal discussions about the NZ conferencing model with government departments and community organizations in St. John’s, and on Gale’s invitation, I joined the discussions on my return to NL in 1991. Next, the provincial child welfare director convened more formal meetings to consider a trial demonstration of the model. At these meetings, interest in proceeding with the project was voiced by senior bureaucrats in social services, justice, and women’s policy and by workers in the community (for women, children, and men who abuse) and in agencies (child welfare, prosecution, police). Enlarging discussion of the model, forums were held with feminist and anti-violence organizations, social workers, and a rights group for parents whose children had been removed from the home. Again, support for the project was expressed, including by feminists who viewed the model as ensuring “more eyes” from within the family networks to watch over what was happening. Thus, the family group could monitor and step in as needed rather than relying on government surveillance and intervention in the home.

Joint funding and resourcing Family Violence Initiative The term “femocracy” can be applied to the interactions with the Family Violence Prevention Division, the federal agency overseeing the Family Violence Initiative. The division’s staffing had some direct involvement in the battered women’s movement. Throughout the project, the agency was very responsive and identified further resources for the work. Their support is notable in a time when government sought to cutback women’s programming, though some exceptions were made for family violence (Brodie, 2008). The original plan was for two years of funding for conferencing running from April 1993 through March 1995 when the Family Violence Initiative was scheduled to end, with the province then assuming programmatic costs. A federal election led to a change in government and put on hold the release of project funding to the university until September 1993, reducing the already short conferencing period to one-and-a-half years. The exception was Nain, where the Labrador Inuit Health Commission extended conferencing by two additional months. Over the course of the project, joint funding from different sources made it possible to carry out conferencing as well as the post-conferencing evaluation and dissemination (e.g., videos, report translation). By the end, the

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project had received funding from multiple federal departments, Labrador Inuit organizations, NL departments, and Memorial University. As discussed below, the project tested means of resourcing the family groups’ participation in conferencing and the plans that they developed. As common to project funding, these were all for short-term efforts that did not require a commitment to ongoing programmatic resources. At the end of the project, dollars were not reallocated to FGDM, even though all three sites asked for continuation of conferencing, the evaluation results were positive, and the province, still evincing interest, passed enabling legislation over two decades later in 2018.14 Chapter 5 examines challenges and possibilities in maintaining and expanding programs that run counter to agency norms of controlling families rather than supporting family decision making. Resourcing family costs The Family Violence Initiative paid for the salaries of project staff and central administrative and operational expenses. The FGDM coordinators and researchers were hired from residents in each site. The contract did not cover family costs. Instead, these items were built into the agreements with agencies referring families to the project. They were expected to underwrite the family groups’ travel to the conferences and assist with the costs of carrying out the FGDM plans. Families can be discouraged by slow turn-around of plan authorizations, and slowdowns can undermine their carefully developed action steps in constantly evolving circumstances. Accordingly, the referring agencies’ agreements specified measures to speed up agency response time. These entailed granting the authority to front-line workers to approve on the spot plans and their associated costs within certain amounts. If these cost limits were exceeded, quick turnaround of supervisory authorization was stipulated. From the start, provincial social services clearly laid out these expectations to their staff. The hope was that other agencies would come on board with making referrals or join social services in funding plans of families with whom they were also involved. Toward the end of the project, correctional services secured Family Violence Initiative dollars for a trial demonstration. The family group conference described in Chapter 2 is one such example. An innovative method of generating resources for families was a formula for pooling funds among families with common needs as identified in their plans. The intent was to help the project sites initiate services not currently available in their community. Conferencing identified needs across families, such as land-based addictions treatment in Nain and transportation for isolated single mothers on the Port au Port Peninsula. The short time span of the project precluded putting into effect the pooled funds formula.

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Thus, although time limited, an immediate economic benefit to their communities was the infusion of federal funds to hire some of their residents as project staff. Once conferencing started, a well-appreciated boon was the increased public funding for local families in dealing with severe family violence. Rapid start-up The abbreviated project time period necessitated moving swiftly to start the project. The university quickly set up an infrastructure for the project and moved funds to the project sites. To provide coordination to the project as a whole, a provincial protocol committee was formed from representatives from each project site, government departments, provincial associations, and the university. These deliberations hammered out, revised, and disseminated protocols that would work across the three sites and the involved institutions. The direct participation of project staff in the provincial meetings was quite unusual. As the St. John’s FGDM coordinator pointed out, “Very rarely would I have access to the crown prosecutor, head of parole, director of CPS [child protection services]; as a manager in other positions I’ve held, rarely would they be sitting around talking about an issue unless a tragedy happened” (S. MacLeod, personal communication, May 5, 2021). At each site, the early planning process had galvanized interest in FGDM and generated a group of community activists and professionals, who then transitioned into serving as the local advisory committee and brought others along, expanding local project guidance. These voluntary committees were instrumental in shaping FGDM to their communities and were involved in decisions on project staffing, securing support for the project, and advising on the evaluation. Early on, an important decision of the Nain advisory committee was to house the project with the LIHC in order to enhance the project’s credibility in the community.15 In addition to the advisory committees, each site provided consultation to the FGDM coordinator and researcher on working with specific families in their communities. In Nain, the advisory committee chose to have this function served by the well trusted LIHC health advisor. The Port au Port Peninsula and St. John’s opted to set up independent community panels, similar to the model of resource panels used in NZ.16 With the permission of the families, the consultants provided advice on engaging in culturally respectful ways and with attention to safety, health, housing, and other issues of concern to the families. Remembering back, the St. John’s FGDM coordinator commented that she selected panel members whom she could rely on to safeguard against her “doing anything that would hurt women” (S. MacLeod, personal communication, October 20, 2021). Shortly before the start of conferencing, three trainers arrived, courtesy of NZ. Two were FGDM coordinators, one Maori and one Pakeha (European

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descent), who traveled to each project site and provided FGDM training workshops to a very broad range of participants. Such comprehensive training was a means of educating local communities about the model as practiced in NZ so that they could fit the model to their own contexts. The third trainer (Pakeha) was a senior researcher who provided consultation on the research design. The workshops offered practice and evaluation tools and inspired hope. By this stage, NZ child welfare had learned that families welcomed conferencing and developed plans that workers were glad to approve (Paterson & Harvey, 1991). Outcome evaluation, however, was not available then for NZ child welfare conferences. Nevertheless, it was already apparent that youth justice conferences, for which extensive research was undertaken, diverted young persons from court and led to a precipitous drop in their incarceration (Maxwell & Morris, 1993). Community leadership, emergent responsive regulation Local organizers at each site elected to take part in the project because of their long-standing concern about family violence in their communities and their steadfast commitment to families making decisions over their own affairs. All three sites had all established shelters for women and their children and recognized that this program was essential but that far more action to prevent and stop family violence were required beyond the shelter doors. Across the sites, the organizers placed violence in the home squarely within a keen understanding of the larger societal factors distorting relationships within families. All three regions had experienced dislocation and impoverishment of families and their communities, devaluation of women’s traditional role in the home, and heightened vulnerability of women and children to violence. The sites’ histories shaped their differing approaches to organizing in their communities. On the Port au Port Peninsula, the tradition of helping out was a means of promoting women’s leadership beyond kinship networks and pushing back against province-wide disdain of their families and communities. Nain applied an Inuit specific, Inuit women led approach by placing FGDM under community control, in line with their objective of self-government. In the provincial seat of government, St. John’s organizers used state engagement to firm up government-community alliances and encourage participatory decision making within the hierarchical structure imposed by funding and policy requirements. The shortened project duration called for a quick start-up. Four factors expedited this process. First, the groundwork had been laid in the project sites through comprehensive organizing efforts and community decision making. Second, the responsiveness of provincial authorities to FGDM was prompted by rampant shock over the failure of the clergy and government

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to stop child sexual and physical abuse. Third, the university had extensive experience with community outreach and could rapidly set up the infrastructure for working with off-campus sites at quite a distance. Fourth, the project garnered international support, most notably evident in the just-intime arrival of the NZ training team but also more generally through sharing restorative theory, practice, and research. What the project made possible was for multiple perspectives to be heard in local planning and for the participating communities, as a group, to access public authorities in negotiating project policy and procedures. The project opened doors to talking directly with senior bureaucrats. In addition, the project connected the sites on their own terms to the sole university in the province. Thus, prominent in the lead-in to FGDM were two narrative threads of a restorative approach. The first of these storylines was restoring family and cultural leadership. With long histories of family and community exploitation, this FGDM goal resonated with all three sites and motivated them to take part in the project. The first narrative thread created a discourse supporting the storyline of regulating responsively the healing process at the local and provincial levels. The strength of the inclusive organizing efforts generated an emergent system of local responsive regulation. Community residents had taken part in decisions on whether to participate in the project, who to hire as staff, and how to structure the project and its evaluation for their families. The strength of the local organizing built the trust of the involved government departments in collaborating with the project sites. At the provincial level, an emerging system of responsive regulation was seen in the on-site community-­government commitment to support the family groups’ plans and in the provincial meetings to enact policies reinforcing family and community leadership. These local and provincial collaborations were a form of hybridization with community, government, and university participants around the same table. Together they developed strategies so that FGDM could nurture the healing of families and communities. The next chapter examines the healing process as expressions of affinity and acts of caring sustained by responsive systems.

Notes



1. The Bay St. George Status of Women Council began in 1985 and incorporated in 1987. 2. The Island of NL is 111,390 square kilometers and Labrador is nearly three times larger at 294,330 square kilometers, for a provincial total of 405,720 square kilometers. The province is about 1.75 times the land mass of Great Britain and over three times the combined area of the Canadian Maritime Provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island), and if it were a US state, it would be fourth in size after Alaska, Texas, and California. See https://www.gov.nl.ca/ aboutnl/area.html. 3. The initiation and implementation of the FGDM Project are documented in Pennell and Burford (1995).

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4. All quotations in this paragraph are from the Implementation Report, Vol. I, p. 10. 5. Nellie McClung advocated for women’s suffrage in Manitoba, which in 1916 became the first Canadian province to grant White (usually British descent) women the vote. In Canada, the federal and provincial governments variously imposed exclusions from voting on people who were First Nation, non-White, pacifist Protestant, and non-Protestant. 6. The term “jakatars” probably came from “jackotar,” referring to French nationals who deserted their fishing ships (Robinson, 2014). 7. Implementation Report, Vol. I, p. 15. 8. All quotations in the first two paragraphs of this section are from the Implementation Report, Vol. I, p. 16. 9. Inuit Nunangat is the four northern regions that are the homeland of the Inuit in Canada. 10. The St. John’s video, Widening the Circle (Burford & Pennell, 1998b), can be accessed for free at https://linney.mun.ca/pages/view.php?ref=10099&k=. 11. The OkâlaKatigêt Society in Nain provided the Labrador Inuit communications by television, radio, and printed materials. 12. The video in Inuttitut and English can be accessed for free: Inuttitut version, available at https://linney.mun.ca/pages/view.php?ref=42241&k=; English version, available at https://linney.mun.ca/pages/view.php?ref=40449&k=. 13. From north to south, Nain, Hopedale, Makkovik, Postville, and Rigolet. 14. SNL2018 Chapter C-12.3, Children, Youth and Families Act, Part III, Protective Intervention, 13. Family group conference and alternate dispute resolution. Retrieved September 21, 2021, from https://www.assembly.nl.ca/legislation/sr/ statutes/c12-3.htm#13_. 15. A Nain committee worked with two university consultants, using a participatory video method, to develop a plan for FGDM in their community (Taylor & Williamson, 1995). 16. Oranga Tamariki Ministry for Children, Practice Centre. (2020, February 18). Care and protection resource panels. Retrieved October 29, 2021, from https://practice.orangatamariki.govt.nz/practice-approach/practice-standards/ work-closely-in-partnership-with-others/care-and-protection-resource-panel/.

References Archdiocesan Commission of Enquiry into the Sexual Abuse of Children by Members of the Clergy. [Winter Commission]. (1990). Report. St. John’s, NL, CA: Archdiocese of St. John’s. Available at https://collections.mun.ca/digital/collection/cns_tools/id/161578 Bavington, D. (2010). Managed annihilation: An unnatural history of the Newfoundland cod collapse. Vancouver, BC, CA: UBC Press. Black, N. (1989). Social feminism. Ithaca, NY, US: Cornell University Press. Brodie, J. (1998). Restructuring and the politics of marginalization. In M. Tremblay & C. Andrew (Eds.), Women and political representation in Canada (pp. 19–37). Ottawa, ON, CA: University of Ottawa Press. Brodie, J. (2008). We are all equal now: Contemporary gender politics in Canada. Feminist Theory, 9(2), 145–164. doi: 10.1177/1464700108090408. Burford, G., & Pennell, J. (1998b). Widening the circle: The family group decision making experience. Video prepared by the Centre for Academic & Media Services, Memorial University of Newfoundland for Health Canada, Family Violence Prevention Unit. Hull, QC, CA: Minister of Public Works and Government Services. Available at https://linney.mun.ca/pages/view.php?ref=10099&k=

FGDM Project Planning  83 Burford, G., Pennell, J., & Williams, F. (1998). Saputjinik: Healing each other: An Inuit family deals with domestic violence: Facilitator notes for video program. St. John’s, NL, CA: Memorial University. Available at https://linney.mun.ca/pages/view.php?ref= 40449&k= Burford, G., Pennell, J., Williams, F., & Maggo, P., with translation by A. Andersen & R. Andersen. (1996, August). The role of traditional knowledge in stopping family violence through family and community group conferences in Nain, Labrador. Presentation at Traditional Knowledge and the Contemporary World, the 10th Inuit Studies Conference, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, CA. Christiansen-Ruffman, L. (1979). Women as persons in Atlantic Canadian communities. Paper presented at the Third Annual Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women Conference, Edmonton, AB, CA. Clarke, S. (2010). Newfoundland and Labrador English. Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Cullum, L. (2014). “It’s up to the women”: Gender, class, and nation building in Newfoundland, 1935–1945. In L. Cullum & M. Porter (Eds.), Creating this place: Women, family, and class in St. John’s, 1900–1950 (pp. 179–201). Montreal, QC, CA: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Cullum, L., & Porter, M. (2014). Introduction. In L. Cullum & M. Porter (Eds.), Creating this place: Women, family, and class in St. John’s, 1900–1950 (pp. 3–24). Montreal, QC, CA: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Currie, D. (1993). Violence against women: Confronting the limits of legal solutions to social problems. Paper presented at the Osgoode Institute for Feminist Legal Studies Conference, North York, ON, CA. Durst, D. (1994). False economies in Newfoundland’s social and child welfare policies. In A. F. Johnson, S. McBride, & P. J. Smith (Eds.), Continuities and discontinuities: The political economy of social welfare and labour market policy in Canada (pp. 207–217). Toronto, ON, CA: University of Toronto Press. George, G. (1997). Rethinking community development: Gender and grass-roots activism in Bay St. George, Newfoundland. In G. Burford (Ed.), Ties that bind: An anthology of readings on social work and social welfare in Newfoundland and Labrador (pp. 244–254). St. John’s, NL, CA: Jesperson Press. George, G. (2000). The rock where we stand: An ethnography of women’s activism in Newfoundland. Toronto, ON, CA: University of Toronto Press. Gotell, L. (1998). A critical look at state discourse on “violence against women”: Some implications for feminist politics and women’s citizenship. In M. Tremblay & C. Andrew (Eds.), Women and political representation in Canada (pp. 39–75). Ottawa, ON, CA: University of Ottawa Press. Government of Newfoundland. (1995, October). Socio-economic trends in Newfoundland. St. John’s, NL, CA: Department of Social Services, Statistics Division. Hall, M., LeRoy, C., & Fenwick, P. (1992, July). Educational needs assessment report. NL, CA: Port au Port Community Education Pilot Project Committee. Handcock, G. (2000). English settlement. St. John’s, NL, CA: Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Website. Retrieved October 9, 2021, from www.heritage.nf.ca › articles › society › settlement Hebert, C., & Foley, J. (1997). Building shelter … taking down walls. In G. Burford (Ed.), Ties that bind: An anthology of readings on social work and social welfare in Newfoundland and Labrador (pp. 187–221). St. John’s, NL, CA: Jesperson Press.

84  FGDM Project Planning Hebert, C., & Seymour, P. (1995). Therapeutic intervention with sex offenders, Newfoundland and Labrador Phase II: Planning Final Report 1992–95 (Cat. No. JS4-131995-05E). Ottawa, ON, CA: Supply and Services Canada. Archived by the Solicitor General Canada. Retrieved August 2, 2021, from https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/lbrr/archives/rc%20560.s47% 20h4%201992-eng.pdf Higgins, J. (2011). Collapse of denominational education. St. John’s, NL, CA: Heritage Newfoundland & Labrador. Retrieved September 3, 2021, from https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/society/collapse-denominational-education.php Higgins, J. (2012). The modern women’s movement in Newfoundland and Labrador. St. John’s, NL, CA: Heritage Newfoundland & Labrador. Retrieved September 8, 2021, from https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/politics/modern-women-movement.php Kealey, L., & Sanger, J. (1989). Introduction. In L. Kealey & J. Sanger (Eds.), Beyond the vote: Canadian women and politics (pp. 3–15). Toronto, ON, CA: University of Toronto Press. Kemuksigak, P. (1992). Needs assessment of family violence services and programs for the Inuit of Labrador. North West River, NL, CA: Labrador Inuit Health Commission. Madison, S., & Jung, K. (2008). Autonomy and engagement: Women’s movements in Australia and South Korea. In S. Grey & M. Sawer (Eds.), Women’s movements: Flourishing or in abeyance? (pp. 33–48). London, UK and New York, NY, US: Routledge. Findlay, T. (2015). Femocratic administration : Gender, governance, and democracy in Ontario. Toronto, ON, CA: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division Mannion, J. J. (2000). The Irish in Newfoundland. St. John’s, NL, CA: Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador. Retrieved September 1, 2021, from www.heritage. nf.ca/society/irish_newfoundland.html Martin, K. (2009). Are we also here for that? Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit—Traditional knowledge, or critical theory? The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 29, 183–202. Maxwell, G., & Morris, A. (1993). Families, victims and culture: Youth justice in New Zealand. Wellington, NZ: Social Policy Agency and Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington. Retrieved October 25, 2021, from https://www.msd.govt. nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/archive/1993-family-victims-and-culture.pdf Monkman, V. (1988). Silences: Child sexual abuse and the Canadian government. Resources for Feminist Research, 17(3), 56–58. Natcher, D. C., Felt, L., & Procter, A. (Eds.). (2012). Settlement, subsistence, and change among the Labrador Inuit: The Nunatsiavummiut experience. Winnipeg, MB, CA: University of Manitoba Press. National Council of Welfare, Canada. (1979). Women and poverty. Hull, QC, CA: Supply and Services. National Task Force on Suicide in Canada. (1989). Suicide in Canada. Ottawa, ON, CA: Minister of National Health and Welfare. Nunatsiavut Government. (2021). The path to self-government: How we got to where we are today. Nain, NL, CA: Author. Retrieved August 19, 2021, from https://www.nunatsiavut.com/government/the-path-to-self-government/ Paterson, K., & Harvey, M. (1991). An evaluation of the organisation and operation of care and protection family group conferences. Wellington, NZ: Department of Social Welfare. Pauktuutit (Inuit Women’s Association). (1990). A community perspective on health promotion and substance abuse: A report on community needs in the Northwest Territories, Nunavik, Quebec and Northern Labrador. Ottawa, ON, CA: Author.

FGDM Project Planning  85 Pauktuutit (Inuit Women’s Association). (1991). No more secrets. Ottawa, ON, CA: Author. Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada. (1989, Rev. 2006). The Inuit way: A guide to Inuit culture. Ottawa, ON, CA: Author. Retrieved August 23, 2021, from https:// www.relations-inuit.chaire.ulaval.ca/sites/relations-inuit.chaire.ulaval.ca/f iles/ InuitWay_e.pdf Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada. (2016). Strategy to engage Inuit women in economic participation. Ottawa, ON, CA: Author. Retrieved August 23, 2021, from https:// www.pauktuutit.ca/wp-content/uploads/Engaging_Inuit_Women_in_Economic_ Participation.pdf Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada. (2019, March). Study of gender-based violence and shelter service needs across Inuit Nunangat: Final report. Ottawa, ON, CA: Author. Retrieved August 23, 2021, from https://www.pauktuutit.ca/wp-content/uploads/PIWC-RptGBV-and-Shelter-Service-Needs-2019-03.pdf Pennell, J. (1987). Ideology at a Canadian shelter for battered women: A reconstruction. Women’s Studies International Forum, 10(2), 113–123. doi: 10.1016/0277-5395(87)90020-3. Pennell, J. (1990). Democratic hierarchy in feminist organizations. Dissertation Abstracts International, 50/12-A, 4118. (University Microfilms No. AAD90-15034). Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (1995). Family group decision making: New roles for “old” partners in resolving family violence: Implementation Report (Vols. I–II). St. John’s, NL, CA: Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work. Available at https://go.ncsu. edu/fgdm Pitch, T. (1990). From oppressed to victims: Collective actors and the symbolic use of the criminal justice system. Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, 10, 123–185. Rankin, L. P., & Vickers, J. (1998). Locating women’s politics. In M. Tremblay & C. Andrew (Eds.), Women and political representation in Canada (pp. 341–367). Ottawa, ON, CA: University of Ottawa Press. Robinson, A. (2014). Enduring pasts and denied presence: Mi’kmaw challenges to continued marginalization in Western Newfoundland. Anthropologica, 56(2), 383–389, 391–397. Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Response of the Newfoundland Criminal Justice System to Complaints. [Hughes Commission]. (1991). Report. St. John’s, NL, CA: Office of the Queen’s Printer. Available at http://lib-lespaul.library.mun.ca/PDFs/ cns_tools/TheReportoftheArchdiocesanCommissionof EnquiryVolumeOne.pdf Sawatsky, A., Cunsolo, A., Harper, S. L., Shiwak, I., & Wood, M. (2019). “WE HAVE OUR OWN WAY”: Exploring pathways for wellbeing among Inuit in Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada. In C. Fleming & M. Manning (Eds.), Routledge handbook of Indigenous wellbeing (pp. 223–236). London, UK: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781351051262 Sawer, M. (1990). Sisters in suits: Women and public policy in Australia. Sydney, AU: Allen & Unwin. Sharpe, C. (2005). Just beyond the fringe: Churchill Park garden suburb in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The Canadian Geographer, 49(4), 400–410. doi: 10.1111/j.0008-3658. 2005.00104.x. Strong-Boag, V. (1991). Home dreams: Women and the suburban experiment in Canada, 1945–60. The Canadian Historical Review, 72(4), 471–504. doi: 10.3138/ CHR-072-04-03. Taylor, S., & Williamson, T. (1995). Report to the Family Group Decision Making Project inception phase, Nain, Labrador, July/November 1993. In J. Pennell & G. Burford, Family group decision making: New roles for “old” partners in resolving family

86  FGDM Project Planning violence: Implementation Report (Vol. I, Appendix A, pp. 293–299). St. John’s, NL, CA: Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work. Available at https:// go.ncsu.edu/fgdm Town Council of Nain. (1993, June). About our town. Nain, NL, CA: Author. Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (2015). Canada’s residential schools: The Inuit and northern experience: The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vol. 2. Montreal, QC, CA: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Valverde, M. (1991). The age of light, soap, and water: Moral reform in English Canada, 1885– 1925. Toronto, ON, CA: McClelland & Stewart. White, G. (2021). “We, the Inuit of Labrador”: Balancing Inuit and Western traditions in the Nunatsiavut constitution. Journal of Canadian Studies, 55(1), 88–117. doi: 10.3138/ jcs.2019-0043. Wright, M. (2003, March). Newfoundland and Labrador history in Canada, 1949–1972. St. John’s, NL, CA: Royal Commission on Renewing and Strengthening Our Place in Canada. Retrieved September 4, 2021, from https://www.gov.nl.ca/publicat/royalcomm/research/history.pdf

Chapter 4

FGDM Conferencing—Resetting Narrative, Revitalizing Culture

“Narratives are often thought to get into our heads, change the way we think and feel, whether we want them to or not.” – Rosiek and Snyder1 (2020, p. 1159)

That family A long-disparaged family was known as “that family” and written off as a “lost cause” by their small community on the Port au Port Peninsula (Pennell & Burford, 1996, p. 215).2 This narrative, circulating and recirculating for years, took on a life of its own and, as Jerry Rosiek and Jimmy Snyder would say, got into heads whether it was wanted or not. The home of “that family” was not a safe place: The father, a heavy drinker, was violent toward his wife; in turn, the son physically aggressed against his mother and little sister and had committed multiple offences in the community; and the mother, ill-equipped to express herself, reacted explosively with verbal outbursts. After much preparation, the mother and son agreed to attend the conference. The father never consented to attend but sent a pot of soup for the luncheon. The father’s contribution could be taken as a show of support for the proceedings, a way to manipulate the group from a distance, or both. Lowering barriers As the case with other conferences on the peninsula, the setting downplayed distinctions between the family group and the service providers. The conference was held on Saturday when more family could attend and at a community center to which the family group was quite accustomed. Everyone—the family and service providers—wore informal attire (typically jeans) and spoke in everyday language. Tea and coffee were set out, and lunch was simple, including the father’s soup. Tensions started high at the conference: The mother cried after hearing the presentation on family violence, and the son cried on hearing the report by the DOI: 10.4324/9781003105374-4

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police officer on his misconduct. Over the day, the mother and son were comforted by their respective support persons and by hugs and friendly joking from the family group. The relatives told little stories from their own lives to show that all families go through tough times. They affirmed the mother’s caring for her family and reclaimed the father as a good person who hurt his family when intoxicated. All this joining together made it possible to recognize the extent of the violence and agree on a plan to keep family members safe. The one-day conference lowered barriers between the extended family and their struggling relatives and gave the family group the opportunity for “helping out,” the modus operandi of local organizing on the Port au Port Peninsula (see Chapter 3). The result was renewal of the family group’s sense of kinship based on concern for their relatives and transformation of “that family” into a respectable part of their cultural network. This reset the narrative from isolation and shame to family unity and pride and was a pattern found across so many of the conferenced families. The family reframing went hand in hand with lower rates of family violence. This chapter begins by looking back at the results of conferencing in the FGDM Project and then moves forward to contemporary cultural revitalization of families and their communities, including on the Port au Port Peninsula with its history of suppressing francophone and Mi’kmaw language and culture. The chapter concludes with a presentation by Kristen Basque, a Mi’kmaw leader in Nova Scotia, on instituting an authentic approach to “calling on our families” to resolve issues within families and their cultural networks. As the Mi’kmaq exemplify, revitalizing culture is what can truly reset narratives that galvanize Indigenous, racial, gender, social, economic, and environmental justice (Battiste, 2000; Voyageur, Brearley, & Calliou, 2015).

The agency of narratives In the conference for “that family,” restorative narrative threads, particularly storytelling for hope and recovery, are woven throughout as the group cried, hugged, laughed, and ate together. The focus in this chapter, though, is on a reset of the entire family narrative, which may emerge out of the unwinding of the restorative threads. The harmfulness of some narratives calls for their resetting. The term resetting has multiple and rich meanings, whether restarting electronic systems to update systems, straightening bones to mend fractures, or rebooting TV shows to refresh interest. All these are nuances in what is meant by resetting narratives so that families can update, mend, and refresh their relationships. When Rosiek and Snyder speak of narratives getting into our heads, with or without our conscious volition, they are referring to the capacity to act, or agency, of matter, including narratives. From the perspective of feminist new materialism, all matter, human and nonhuman, material and discursive, has

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vitality (Carrière, 2020; Fox & Alldred, 2019; Truman, 2019). The agency of narratives, Rosiek, White settler, and Snyder, Indigenous, observe has a very long lineage among Indigenous scholars (Doerfler, Sinclair, & Stark, 2013) and a far briefer one among feminists within a new materialist framework. Given the impact of stories, we have an ethical obligation to ask, “What are we and our stories becoming together?” (Rosiek & Snyder, 2020, p. 1153). Narrative inquiry is a means of responding to this question.

Narrative inquiry Three decades ago, the project’s evaluation applied quantitative analysis and qualitative interpretation within Western norms for evaluation and research. Today, identification of the narrative reset is informed by Indigenous and Western narrative inquiry, both of which have insights to impart to understanding the agency of narratives (Rosiek, Snyder, & Pratt, 2020). Indigenous scholars Eva Marie Garroutte and Kathleen Westcott elucidate, “While stories feature devices such as protagonist and plot, narratives resemble rules of grammar; they influence the kinds of stories that can be told” (Garroutte & Westcott, 2013, p. 66). Narratives, from the Western perspective of Arthur Frank (2016), are “companion stories” that guide our understanding of “stories-in-progress that we find ourselves part of at particular moments in our lives” (p. 17). Integrating disparate strands of stories, storyteller Westcott connects to mythic reality and sociologist Frank relies on ethical principles. Nonetheless, both Indigenous and Western narratives demand that we attend to their built-in assumptions because of the narratives’ suasion over the very possibilities that we can envision. Project assumptions From the outset, the FGDM Project specified its assumptions about why conferencing might make homes safer and more caring places. The project’s statement of philosophy, consensually developed by the planning committee, had messages of cautious hope in families and their cultural communities. Two particularly stand out: 1 “With support many families can make and carry out sound plans for resolving abuse between their members”; and 2 “Measures to stop family violence are most effective when they develop out of the strengths of the communities and the cultures in which the families live.”3 At the time, I saw these assumptions as a “leap of faith.” Having worked in the field of family violence first as a child protection worker and then as a

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women’s advocate, I knew well the gravity of the violence but had also seen the capacity of families to overcome the estrangement and violation (Pennell, 2018). What I did not imagine 30 years ago is that together these assumptions gave ample room for family groups to use conferencing in service of resetting their narrative. Embedding project assumptions Across all stages of conferencing from the preparations through finalizing the plan, the coordinators reiterated that the family group was the decision maker. This view was codified in the practice guidance in the project manual, which was directed not only to project staff but also to local communities. For example, in the section on the family private time, when the service providers leave the room, the manual framed the family group’s decision-­ making role as a right: The family group members “need to know: that time alone at any stage is their right … [and] “they have the right to agree or disagree that a care and protection problem exists.”4 The latter right challenges the foundation of child protection services that workers’ judgments are to be trusted over those of families and their cultural networks. Conferencing resets The qualitative themes and quantitative results, summarized in the project’s implementation report (Pennell & Burford, 1995) and outcome report (Burford & Pennell, 1998a), point to an updating of the families’ narratives as competent, caring, responsible, and belonging to a group worthy of respect.5 Such an update is particularly notable because according to researchers conducting an independent analysis, the project families, as well as the comparison families, had “a large number of ‘chronic’ cases” with “persistent, on-going problems” (Andy Rowe Consultants, Inc, 1997, p. 17 & Appendix A, p. 1). Long-standing problems were certainly the case for the family that came into conferencing called “that family.”

Conference implementation6 During the project, 37 conferences7 were held for 32 families, with 472 participants in attendance, of whom most were family or their relatives and friends. The high level of participation showed how the conference preparations by the coordinators and the family groups refreshed interest in the family. These preparations usually took place over a three-to-four-week period. Many families assumed that no one cared about them. Their misperception was persuasively reset by having their relatives encourage attendance, show up and stay through the conference, and offer to carry out elements of the family plans. Of note, most invitees agreed to attend the conference

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and among the minority not agreeing, most wished to send a message to be shared at the conference.8 Taking responsibility versus responsibilization Before the conferences, many of the mothers in the families dreaded that they would be attacked for their families’ problems. This maternal responsibilization had been previously conveyed by child welfare assessments, fed by insinuations within the community, and instilled by gendered norms. In advance of the conferences, coordinators strategized with mothers on how to ward off such attacks. Restarting the narrative was mothers’ preparing a personal statement read out at the beginning of the conference in which they took responsibility for their past failings and explained what help they needed. As one coordinator observed, “When a person identifies all their faults themselves at the outset, there is little to be gained by family members repeating these faults in the form of criticism.”9 These statements also “tempered” the views of the child protection workers who could see the mothers as owning their behaviors while asking for assistance to change how they related in their families. In situations of family violence, the conference got issues into the open and a vital reset was redirecting attention away from the mother to the person who had committed the abuse. For example: One mother said of her daughter’s sexual abuse that before the conference everyone was always asking her what had happened, despite the conviction and imprisonment of the family member, but since the conference, no one asked. They all heard it at the same time and all present stopped blaming the victim.10 This validated the daughter’s experience and meant that the mother was no longer subjected to inquiries and responsibilized for the sexual abuse committed by the relative. For their part, the family group members were motivated to take collective responsibility on behalf of their relatives.11 Families making decisions The family plans were developed during the private time, when service providers were only to enter if the family group wished to ask for information.12 On the evaluation form completed at the end of the conferences, 232 of the 330 respondents identified 532 attendees13 as the main decision makers, and among these, 85% were family group and 11% were from the informal network. This left 3% as non-family-group members (e.g., social worker, coordinator), confirming that for the most part, the privacy of the deliberations had been respected. These findings also mean the decisions were developed

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out of the “communities and cultures in which the families live” and set up the means of testing the second premise on the effectiveness of such an approach in stopping family violence. The weight of the family group in decision making often provokes the fear that those committing the abuse will control the deliberations when the coordinator or social worker is not present. This trepidation was certainly evident in my requiring a “leap of faith” to accept the project assumptions listed above. My initial reservations were apparent in the host of instruments to measure decision making used in NL and later in North Carolina. The findings on how the decisions were actually made at the conference generated trust in the family group members and among themselves. During interviews held approximately one week after the conferences, participants were asked how the decisions were reached in the private time. The family group members overwhelmingly reported that decisions were by consensus, bargaining, and following a trusted leader. These decision methods rebuilt trust and yielded plans with which nearly all participants agreed.14 As summed up by one person who had been abused, “Everyone spoke truthfully and were right in the things [they decided].”15 According to the family group participants, ordering, manipulation, and avoidance occurred less frequently, and they ranked these processes as less influential. A similar pattern in decision making was found by the North Carolina Family Group Conferencing Project, and the North Carolina evaluation further identified that if manipulation was cited, the respondents were more likely to say that they had not been adequately prepared for the conference (Pennell, 2006). Conference outcomes The outcomes were assessed using different instruments in order to triangulate findings. A detailed report of the findings and instruments can be found in the outcome report (Burford & Pennell, 1998a). Here two areas are discussed because of their implications for resetting family narratives. The first is primarily a qualitative interpretation of the FGDM participants’ views of the impact of conferencing. The second is a quantitative analysis of indicators of child safety and women safety for the project and comparison groups. Better off To ascertain the impact of FGDM, interviews were held with nearly one-quarter (115) of the conference attendees on average 14 months after their conference. Most interviewees were family or extended family. While plans developed at the conferences were usually not carried out in their entirety, two-thirds (66.7%) of the interviewees reported that the family was better off after the conference and nearly another one-fifth (19.3%) said that the family

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was left just the same. Out of all interviewees, seven (6.1%) thought the conference made the family worse off.16 The reasons why the conference increased the difficulty for a minority of families needed to be examined closely. Why worse off Those citing worse off voiced two main reasons.17 The first was placement of children outside the home. For instance, an aunt said that her relatives were worse off because her niece was “now going away to live with her sister. Her mother might not even see her again.” The second reason was the failure of Social Services or family to complete key elements of plans and they wanted additional conferences. Having just one conference was seen as insufficient in getting all issues into the open; and follow-up conferences were seen as necessary to remind participants of their pledges in the plan. A very telling example comes from a daughter in Nain who initially saw her family as improving and then nine months later gave a more qualified response: “[My family] was better, because there is no drinking. Same, because we still have to bum [begging for money and food] and need help with budgeting.” Another seven months later, she rated her family as “worse” and explained, “[I] need[ed] another family conference again—so I could speak out again.” Strikingly, the interviewees did not identify conferencing as increasing violence in the home and elaborated on considerable benefits. While they described backsliding and disappointment, next is discussed why two out of three of the interviewees thought their relationships had been straightened out, with long-term fractures mended. Enhanced family unity Overall, the interviewees’ qualitative responses repeatedly emphasized that conferencing brought them closer to each other and enhanced their family group’s sense of unity. Participants identified this powerful rewriting of the family narrative, irrespective of their project site and family role. They gave four main motivators of this reset. First, the conference helped the family group learn how to talk more openly with each other. Some of the most touching comments came from grandparents.18 On the Port au Port Peninsula, a grandmother spoke of her family becoming much closer: “[My daughter] knows that everyone is here for support in any way she needs. She is also very open now and talks about everything—no more secrets.” In Nain, a grandfather humbly stated, “[The conference] made me realize that just getting together and talking can help. Younger people can tell elders to straighten up—this is what happened to me.” Second, the conference motivated change. The families had helped them realize what they needed to change and had a plan to work toward. For

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example, a friend of a family in St. John’s explained that the family was better off because the conference “put it to them that they could lose the children if not following the plans. They don’t want to lose the children at all.” Third, families were offering more concrete support to each other. A St. John’s grandfather commented on his former wife helping their daughter “with her baby sitting and housework. [The grandchild] visits us every week and also visits her great-grandmother.” In Nain, a relative observed, “The family are helping [the mother] with food, cloths, and babysitting for her, plus she helps when they need her.” Fourth, the conference led to an increase in resources for families, with resulting improvements in family relationships. For instance, a foster mother commented that the “extra funding [for the mom] to spend time doing fun things … with [the two children] was really helpful. The kids really look forward to seeing her now.” In Nain facing a severe housing shortage, family relationships improved as families could move out on their own. Three other benefits of conferencing changed family relationships for the better. The interviewees spoke at length about how care for children and young people had improved. The young people reported that they were “treated better and … feel more content” and this was reflected in progress at school. Adults reported better caregiving: A St. John’s mother who had been abusive reflected, “[I] wouldn’t have made it through the past six months without the conference. [It] provided good insight into parenting skills.” After conferencing, men were less likely to show up drunk, forestalling outbreaks of violence. In a St. John’s family, the mother and daughter concurred that “things are better. [The father] and [daughter] don’t fight any more. [The father] isn’t violent towards any of us and he doesn’t show up here drunk.” In a Nain family, the father observed that the conference “has made a big difference to me for the better. I don’t drink any more and my family doesn’t—we realize that drinking was our main problem.” Backed by child welfare assessments Reviews of child welfare files supported the participants’ views that the conferenced families had made progress on reducing family violence. The changes in perceptions of the involved authorities were likely the effect of improvements in the families’ situations, combined with better working relationships between the families and the workers. Quasi-experimental design As described in Pennell and Burford (2000a), the study, conducted by an independent consulting group, Andy Rowe Consultants, used a quasi-­ experimental design to compare the child welfare files of the families with a conference and similar families without a conference. The consultants

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divided the files of the project families into the pre-period (one year before conferencing) and the post-period (one year after conferencing). For the comparison group, the consultants used the median date of conferencing as the divider between the pre- and post-periods. The consultants worked with social services at each project site to select local comparison families. During the pre-period, the project and comparison groups matched on most criteria (e.g., children’s ages, length of social services’ involvement, types of problems). The workers, though, had taken to heart the project’s request that they refer their most severe cases of family violence for conferencing. While workers in Nain and St. John’s identified local families for the comparison group, the Port au Port Peninsula workers said they had already referred their most problematic cases, and the consultants had to go to another community close to the peninsula to form the comparison group. Despite the consultants’ efforts, the project group had substantially higher levels of indicators of child maltreatment and adult abuse during the pre-period than the comparison group had. Project families safer To compare the two groups, the consultants scrutinized the files for the occurrence of 31 indicators of child maltreatment and adult abuse.19 Given that family violence is not an “incident” but instead a pattern, the main interest was in ascertaining the presence of an indicator and secondarily its frequency in the child welfare files. The 32 project families had a total of 233 events (i.e., documented as present at least once in the files) that indicated family violence; in contrast, in the year after conferencing, project families’ events were halved to a total of 117 events. The 31 comparison families went in the opposite direction, though, to a lesser extent: During the pre-period, they had 129 events indicating family violence, and in the post-period they increased to 165 events. When the indicators were separated into subgroups, these overall patterns for the project and comparison families held for indicators of child maltreatment and mother/wife abuse. The events for child maltreatment referred to child protection activity in investigations and placement of children. For project families, the presence of the events decreased from 28 in the pre-­period to 21 in the post-period; for comparison families, the events increased from 20 to 27. The indicators of mother/wife abuse reflected common patterns in violent homes of denial, depression, and coercion. Examples of events are: the woman giving inconsistent explanations for injuries, and the man keeping necessary income and resources from the woman. In the pre-period, the case files showed far more evidence of woman abuse among the project families than among the comparison families: The conferenced families had over twice the presence of the indicators that were found for the families not

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conferenced. Unlike the comparison families, these events fell for the project families. In the project families, the events dropped from 21 in pre-period to 10 in the post-period. In contrast, these events in the comparison families rose from 10 to 15. A worrisome trend for both groups of families was the persistence of children or youth abusing their mother. For the comparison families, four mothers in the pre-period were abused by a child; the number in the post-period doubled to eight. For the project families, eight project mothers before conferencing had been abused by a child (see example at outset of this chapter); after conferencing, the number only decreased to five. Among the five were four situations in which the child continued to abuse from the prior year. Abuse by a child was not only an indicator of women abuse but also serious mental health issues that precipitated these young persons’ self-mutilation and suicide attempts.20 The despair of the young people revealed their lack of grounding in a family and culture in which they could claim a sense of worth and belonging. Divergent worker response For both project and comparison groups, reporting of abuse/neglect started high and remained high. For the project group, reporting fell from 25 in the pre-period to 19 in the post-period; for the comparison group, reporting rose from 20 to 27. Among those families with reporting, many had multiple reports in the pre-period, and this continued into the post-period. In the year before conferencing, 18 project families and 14 comparison families had more than one complaint of children in need of protection. In the year after conferencing, 13 project families and 15 comparison families had multiple reports. This meant that the families remained of serious concern in their communities. The response of the workers to these reports, however, diverged for the two groups. How protection workers respond to complaints shapes the trajectory of whether children will move deeper into the child welfare system. In the post-period, reports of conferenced children as compared to un-­ conferenced children were much less likely to lead to an emergency visit to the home: Between the pre- and post-periods, emergency visits to children with a conference decreased from 21 to 9, while for children without a conference, emergency visits increased from 14 to 20. In interviews, the workers explained this difference in their response: After the conference, workers said they understood better the family’s situation and could judge with greater confidence whether they needed to go to the home to check on the children. Moreover, emergency apprehensions of project children into care dropped from 12 events in the pre-period to 6 events in the post-period. For the comparison group, emergency apprehensions stayed relatively level, going from five in the pre-period to six in the post-period.

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Overall, this reset of the workers’ views of the families did not appear to harm the children or adults. Substantiated reports, where the workers made a determination that child abuse or neglect had occurred, decreased from 16 to 8 for the project families and increased for the comparison families from 7 to 12. Indicators of unsafe homes declined for the project families. For instance, the event that “any one in family had to leave the home in fear that another family member was going to hurt him/her” went from 13 to 6 for the project families and from 3 to 7 for the comparison families. Getting unstuck As both Kathleen Wescott and Arthur Frank remind us, the narrative sets the premises within which to envision what is possible. We need, then, to take very seriously our ethical obligation to tend narratives in liberating directions. This was certainly not what was happening to the harmful narrative of “that family.” After recurring frustration, social workers too often label families as “stuck cases,” with little likelihood of progressing. The same dismal prognosis is projected by the extended family and community members, disappointed by the ineffectiveness of their multiple attempts to help “stuck” relatives or neighbors. And most of all the families absorb these messages and lose hope, feeding cycles of abuse, suicide, and self-harm. Conferencing replaced the narrative of “stuck” with the message that families and their cultural networks were not the problem but the solution. The premises of conferencing that families and their cultural networks can responsibly make and carry out plans to stop family violence were translated into a narrative of competence, caring, and belonging. This liberatory narrative was always struggling against a neoliberal narrative of the inadequacy of minoritized families and their culture that rationalized extraction of resources from their communities and land (Giles, 2019; Turgeon & Root, 2019). The revelations of child sexual and physical abuse during this period by the clergy and the failure of government to protect the children uncovered the extent to which young bodies became one more resource to exploit. Cultural revival Chapter 3 identified that the Port au Port Peninsula had a long history of being discounted as jakatar (Robinson, 2014). Explaining what jakatar meant, the former FGDM coordinator for the peninsula, recounted: They were seen as poor, dressing funny, driving funny cars, and talking funny because they spoke English with the French accent acquired from their parents. All this ridicule ignored that the people came from an

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extremely vibrant community with a rich tradition of the kitchen party of revelry, music, and storytelling.21 (Stella Campbell, personal communication, November 24, 2021) At the time of the conferences, families were asked to identify the parents’ ethnic origins. None indicated that they were francophone, and none requested French interpretation at the conferences. They identified themselves as anglophone with two exceptions, who referred to themselves as Metis, a mix of European and Mi’kmaw descent. Adoption of English was enforced by the school system that did not permit students to speak in any other language and by the US Air Force base that hired only White, English speakers. Colonial and then neocolonial rule suppressed Indigenous identity across the island. Indigenous-narrated history Pre-contact with Europeans, the island was inhabited by Indigenous peoples for nearly 5,000 years, with the Beothuk residing there more than a thousand years before the arrival at the end of the 15th century of European explorers and fishing ships from France, Portugal, Basque, England, and other European countries (Holly, 2000; Reid, 2020; Renouf, 1999). In the 1700s, as White fishing settlements spread along the coastline, the Beothuk retreated inland, away from seabirds, crucial to their diet and central to their cosmology (Kristensen & Holly, 2013). Telling their own history As the Beothuk’s numbers declined, their cultural organization collapsed, but contrary to colonizers’ fabrications, they did not become extinct. As told by native peoples rather than White colonialists, the Beothuk intermarried with the Innu and Inuit in Labrador, White settlers, and the Mi’kmaq, who had been on the island for a long time as well as elsewhere along the Canadian Atlantic coast (Aylward, 2018; Mi’kmaq Resource Centre, 2021). The English cast the conveniently extinct Beothuk as the desirable Indians and the Mi’kmaq as the savage Indians, allegedly imported by the French to kill off the Beothuk (Hanrahan, 2018). The supposed extinction of the Beothuk, according to Saqamaw (Chief ) Mi’sel Joe of the NL Mi’kmaq,22 was greatest joke ever played in NL (Aylward & Joe, 2018) and served to remove the Indigenous people so that the colonialists could now claim indigeneity (Polack, 2018). Chief Joe welcomed genomic testing because it would only align with what the Mi’kmaq had always known about the interrelationships among the Indigenous peoples. As the Mi’kmaq became educated and moved into positions within government and universities, Chief Joe asserted that their

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long-suppressed oral history would now be heard, and his people could take pride in who they were and uphold their heritage (Aylward & Joe, 2018). Mi’kmaw revival in Western NL In 1949, NL entered confederation with Canada without any formal recognition of First Nations and First Peoples; thus, unlike any other province in the country, they were under no legal and financial obligation to support their Indigenous peoples. Gradually over the latter half of the 20th century Indigenous groups in the province gained some recognition and eventually land claims in the case of the Inuit of Labrador who established Nunatsiavut in 2005 (see Chapter 3). In 1987, the Miawpukek Mi’kmaq of Conne River gained some recognition, but the other Mi’kmaq were considered migrants to the island and without any Indigenous rights. In 2011, the Western NL Mi’kmaw formed the Qalipu (caribou) First Nation Band under the Indian Act of Canada.23 While the band does not have reserve land, they offer numerous cultural, health, education, and economic services to members and connect their membership to the traditional Mi’kmaw Nation going from Quebec through New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia, into NL. As the Qalipu Mi’kmaq sought to revitalize their long-suppressed culture, they claimed Indigenous identity to honor their ancestry and repudiate the censorship of their way of life. Because of the years of disruption of their customary knowledge and their dislocation from traditional hunting grounds, they created hybrids by combining Catholic and Mi’kmaw rituals or by integrating Mi’kmaw traditions with those from different tribes in Canada and the US. In this context, Robinson (2012) explains, “authenticity” was not a matter of returning to pre-colonial practices (p. 12). Instead, to use Robinson’s term in her article’s title, “being and becoming Indian” meant reviving traditions that offered a sense of continuity to their community while modifying them to current conditions. We turn now to why and how the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia, just across the Cabot Strait from NL, reclaimed their children and families away from provincial control. They reached into Indigenous knowledge to reconfigure what started as FGC into their own way of “calling on our families” to take care of their own. This was truly a monumental resetting of the narrative. Mi’kmaw Family & Children’s Services of Nova Scotia, Canada First Nations in Canada give insight into how to renew kinship across families and communities, as exemplified by the Mi’kmaw Family & Children’s Services of Nova Scotia (MFCS). In fact, the name Mi’kmaq comes from the word Ni’kmaq, meaning my kin-friends (MacDonald, Glode, & Wien, 2005, p. 367). MFCS, established in 1985, worked jointly with the Nova Scotia

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Department of Community Services until 1988, when MFCS officially took over children care and foster care programs. Then around 1992–1993, MFCS took over all services, including child protection services. MFCS holds all child welfare responsibilities for the 13 tribal bands of Nova Scotia (NS). The mandate of MFCS was established in law,24 and together, the Mi’kmaw Chiefs and the NS Department of Community Services delegated child welfare authority to MFCS. MFCS was created in response to the public authorities’ deliberate severing of their children and youth from their culture and communities. In the 1960s, the federal government began to shut down Indigenous residential schools; only to be followed by the sixties “scoop”25 of Indigenous children into provincial foster care (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). The urgent need for Mi’kmaw ownership of child welfare services was identified by the NS Native Women’s Association. In the 1970s, the Association’s founding president, Helen Martin, was pained by the deep confusion that their youth experienced on exiting foster and adoptive care, as they began to “try to find out who they are and why they were taken away” (Mi’kmaw Family and Children’s Services of Nova Scotia [MFCS], 2015). Significantly, the Mi’kmaq recognized that self-government extends well beyond governance by chiefs and councils to economic development, education, and family services (Kayseas, 2015a, 2015b). FGC was one means by which families and communities could reclaim primacy in caring for their youngsters. The Mi’kmaw conferencing program, called Wikimanej Kikmanaq (Family Circles), began in 2001 as a pilot study (Wien & Glode, 2011). In 2018, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls found that Mi’kmaw children continued to be overrepresented in provincial care: “Mi’kmaw children represent 18% of the total number of children in care in Nova Scotia, while persons of Aboriginal ancestry represent only 2.7% of the total population of Nova Scotia” (p. 23). Nevertheless, the national inquiry further observed that the number of NS children in care consistently declined during the past five years, and “this trend has also been evident within the Mi’kmaw population, moving from 259 to 186 children in care as of April 2018. In addition, over 75% of those 186 children in care are placed within kinship foster homes” (p. 23). According to MFCS’s 2020 annual report, Wikimanej Kikmanaq has proven “invaluable” in locating placements for youth with kin or in their community (Mi’kmaw Family and Children’s Services of Nova Scotia, 2020, p. 30). MFCS demonstrates the leadership that Indigenous women have assumed in creating and sustaining engagement with families and communities about their children and young persons and working toward safe and caring homes for all family members. One of these women leaders is Kristen Basque. The following overview of Wikimanej Kikmanaq, authored by Kristen Basque, is included in this volume with her and her organization’s permission.

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Wikimanej Kikmanaq—Family circles as an authentic experience for Mi’kmaw families By Kristen Basque Manager of Prevention Services,26 Mi’kmaw Family and Children’s Services of Nova Scotia Origins of the program Joan Glode was the one of the founding Directors and Executive Director who helped develop Mi’kmaw Family and Children’s Services of Nova Scotia. MFCS operates under the Child and Family Services Act (Provincial DCS) and is funded by the Federal Government (ISC). MFCS is a nonprofit community organization responsible for the well-being and protection of children, age newborn to 19. MFCS also operates two Family Healing Centers. The Mi’kmaw Family Healing Program oversees the operation of the Mi’kmaw Family Healing Centers (Transition Houses) located in Millbrook First Nation and the We’koqma’q First Nation. The main purpose of the Centers is to provide a place of safety for women and children and deliver culturally relevant programs to men, women and children who experience violence in all of its forms. Joan Glode’s vision had always been integrating traditional knowledge and healing practices into social work. Joan wanted to keep our children with their families and communities. After visiting the Maori in New Zealand, Joan Glode partnered with Dalhousie University to pilot Family Group Conference (FGC) and DecisionMaking model. In 2003, Mi’kmaw Family & Children’s Services participated in an FGC Research Pilot Project. The Project was to determine how effective the FGC approach was as practiced within the agency. The purpose of the research was to evaluate two ways of proceeding: the FGC method and the standard child protection method and to determine if one approach was more efficient than the other. The Mi’kmaw Family staff helped in the delivery of this research project. The research project had a time limit of two years and was concluded on December 31, 2004. The study concluded that FGC worked for our families (Wien & Glode, 2011). Once the project was concluded there was no funding to continue with the FGC approach; however, Joan Glode recognized the need for culturally appropriate ways of engaging with families. She then moved agency funds into supporting FGC as an ongoing program and hired me as the FGC coordinator in 2005. In our humble beginnings in 2005, our program was named “Family Group Conference and Decision-Making Model”. As our program flourished and evolved so did our name for conferencing which is now named Wikimanej Kikmanaq FGC Program. Wikimanej Kikmanaq in the Mi’kmaw language means “calling on our families.” Our agency has changed the approach from conferencing to family circles.

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From conferencing to family circles The term “conferencing” was too formal for many of our Mi’kmaw families and often wasn’t well received as it didn’t fit our cultural values. When discussing “conferencing” with families you can observe their uneasiness. We then changed the language in our approach when discussing the Wikimanej Kikmanaq FGC Program to our families and introduced it as “Your circle.” Upon using this trauma informed approach, the FGC coordinators observed the positive shift in attitude our families had towards the circle process. The circle is a very sacred place, and it is medicine for us. It has long been a place where words of consolation can be freely spoken, and healing can begin. The circle concept is inherent to the cultural fabric of the Mi’kmaq and is reflective of our traditional practices. It was vital we changed FGC to a circle approach. I was familiar with the favorable outcomes that circles had with our families from having worked in a restorative justice program. I had also worked in child protection and knew that we needed to strengthen and empower our families and communities while engaging in a culturally responsive way. There have been many lessons learned since the inception of Mi’kmaw Family Group Conferencing in 2003 to the present day Wikimanej Kikmanaq Program. We have learned the importance of having a neutral FGC Coordinator, that each circle must be based on respect, everyone is equal and ensuring everyone has a voice in the circle. We all must respect the circle as a sacred place, what is said in the circle needs to stay in the circle. We should only record the family plan and the logistics of who was there, where it was held, and when it was held. Making circles an authentic experience In 2005, upon accepting the position as FGC Coordinator at Mi’kmaw Family & Children Services of Nova Scotia, I had the opportunity to be away from child protection services for a few years and could now see the family group model through fresh eyes. I wanted to learn more about Family Group Conferencing and Decision Making, I researched FGC literature and the various models practiced all over the world. I explored FGC models in New Zealand, Ireland, United States including the study in Newfoundland and Labrador by Joan Pennell. It was so important to find an approach that would meet the needs of our Mi’kmaw families in Nova Scotia. A process that would be meaningful and have lasting positive impacts on our children and families. There was no specific approach that met these needs; however, there were bits and pieces of each model that did. The task was how to make FGC an authentic experience for families, not just a hoop for families to jump through. The approach that met the needs of our families was found in our Mi’kmaw customs, values, and traditions. That has proven to be the most authentic experience for our families.

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Each Mi’kmaw FGC is unique to the circumstances of the child, the family, and the community. However, each FGC follows the same process. This allows each Family Group Circle to maintain its accountability to the participants while honoring the unique circumstances of the case. Every circle starts with an opening prayer of the family’s choice (e.g., smudge, Catholic). The FGC Coordinator starts with welcoming all participants and honoring their courage to be present within the circle. There is a brief review of the purpose and ground rules of the circle. There are four rounds of each Family Group Circle: Introductions, Information Sharing, Response, Closing Round. There is also Private Family Time, where the family meet privately to develop a family plan. There are no time limits to each round, or for the private family time. We encourage all participants to take their time, as it is very important information being shared so that the best possible plan can be developed. A talking piece is used in all FGC circles. We often use a turtle figure as our talking piece as the turtle is sacred to the Mi’kmaq and represents truth in the grandfather teachings. When holding the turtle, you are the only one that shall speak and once you are finished you then pass it to the person next to you. In the center of the circle, the four sacred medicines—cedar, sweetgrass, tobacco and sage—are placed in a smudge bowl along with an eagle feather. We always have a meal of the family’s choice, and we end with a closing prayer. Each person has a piece of the puzzle that we need to bring together so that we may all see the bigger picture. We believe that once a family has all the information, then they may develop the best plan for their family. The example we use in the circle is: We ask everyone to look at the smudge bowl sitting in the center of the circle. We then state that if we were to ask each person to describe the smudge bowl, each person describes the smudge bowl very differently as they are looking at it from their own angle and their perspective. Stressing the importance of having an open mind. No one has greater power within the circle. It is so common for participants to make demands about what they want. In working with families, we often remind families that the children are at the center of our circles. It is our job as adults to make sure their needs are met, and each day is the “best day ever”. Once you remove children from the circle, you remove the purpose of that circle. Each member needs to speak about the love for the children—once members have this perspective, we see shifts in the circle. The circles are not one-time events; it is a journey we take alongside our families to help support them during this difficult time. Not all will be resolved without ongoing hard work. This process will work as much as you want it to work. Listening to the children It is vital that the children’s voice be heard throughout the whole process— however, how they are heard depends on the age and developmental stage

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of the children. The Wikimanej Kikmanaq FGC Program has various tools and forms that are used to ensure that their voice is heard and validated. In some situations, we may share the information as told by the children to the FGC coordinator during the circle with their permission, or they may write a letter and be read as part of the circle. We don’t want to retraumatize the children by hearing difficult information, so for the children that attend the FGC Coordinator will introduce an extra round in which children take part. The round is dedicated to them and allowing them to voice their concerns and wishes. When the children share their happy memories, worries, and wishes, we see the walls tumbling down with their parents. We respect and applaud the parents who choose to take part—this takes a lot of courage. Gathering the circle It takes a lot of work to gather people together for the circle and prepare all participants to sit in a circle to discuss the risks and concerns. FGC Coordinators start by meeting with the parents and talking about their support systems. In some referrals it may require the FGC coordinator to start looking for support because some parents may feel isolated and overwhelmed with their situation. The Wikimanej Kikmanaq FGC Program has developed various tools to assist families to identify support, recognize areas they may need to work on and have the necessary information on available services. The FGC Coordinators assist the family in completing their support map— put the person’s name in the center of the circle and then ask who they call when needing help. These are living documents that the FGC Coordinator and the family continue to build on and expand. The FGC Coordinators ask about the children and their godparents. Godparents are very important in our Mikmaw culture; many children have a very special relationship with their godparents and can be called upon to help raise and give counsel to their godchildren over their life. 27 This supports customary care when parents cannot do the caregiving at this time but still want to remain connected to their children. Once we have the map together, the family can see the circle of support—we then see a big shift for the parents. Families involved with child protection services The families that Wikimanej Kikmanaq FGC Program works with are involved with child protection services at various levels of involvement; we refer to them as family group circles (FGC). After opening prayer and introduction, the circle begins with the social worker and then social worker supervisor. These workers outline the purpose and reason for the circle. Once they are finished then everyone else have a turn to speak. A lot of work happens before the circle. The first step of the FGC coordinator is to talk with the referral source for updated info within two-to-three days of receiving the referral.

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Then the coordinator goes to the family to explain the program and ask about their willingness to participate. The Wikimanej Kikmanaq FGC Program is a voluntary program, and no one is pressured to participate in a circle when they do not want to. Often when we go in, families are angry and frustrated with the system. We listen to their struggle—this may take a few visits. Once families have vented, they are guided back to what is important, what they care about, and how to get there. Making the plan During private family time, the family group makes the plan. The family identifies who they wish to remain for the planning stage. Once the family completes the family plan, we re-enter into the larger circle to review the plan. A lot of discussion normally occurs during this phase. For instance, if the parents are to go to counseling, we work out who will make the referral or if it will a self-referral. We pick a date for the follow-up circle; we leave to the family to determine when it should happen. Everyone gets a copy of the plan to work towards for the next conference—both family and professionals. It is also important to note that after each circle, the FGC Coordinator helps facilitate a debriefing discussion with the social workers and professionals so that they are not leaving the circle with heavy hearts or unresolved feelings. The FGC Coordinator promptly provides all participants with a copy of the plan to work towards for the next circle—both family and professionals. The debriefing opportunity happens with the family and their supports when the FGC Coordinator delivers the plans to them the day after the circle. At the follow-up circle, it is an opportunity to review what has been completed of the family plan. As life happens, many things have changed so we need to revise the plan to update what is happening now. The follow up FGC allows for progress and accountability for all. The FGC coordinator will facilitate the circle with the same circle format as the first FGC circle. Allowing private family time to develop the plan for the next three months. This is often referred to as developing your “GPS Coordinates” to get to your destination. The destination is family reunification and/or family wellness. The family plans map out the route to get there safely for the whole family. Families not involved with ongoing child protection services We use immediate response circles for families not involved with child protection services on an ongoing basis and are at the intake stage of child protection involvement. The Immediate Response Circles (IRC) is a dual track response to reports of abuse and neglect. It is a different way of engaging families in certain cases that have come to the attention of the intake and investigation team. The IRC approach allows the agency to better meet the needs of the family while keeping children safe and assessing risk throughout

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this process. The referral is made by child welfare’s Intake & Investigation team, so the work is considered prevention and does not require the family to be opened into the child protection system. As in differential response system,28 we have two pathways: The lower risk goes to the immediate response circles and the higher risk goes to family group circles. We do two immediate response circles within six-to-eight weeks of receiving the referral. The families do not need an extended involvement with child welfare. Once the family develops a plan and is connected to services, child welfare can bow out. We are doing more and more immediate response circles with families. Because of COVID, we had to adjust the program a bit but adapted by using tablets so that families could take part virtually. Arrangements when there is family violence The files that come to child protection are often domestic violence situations. The Mi’kmaw Healing Centers’ (shelters) main purposes are to provide a place of safety for women and children and deliver culturally relevant programs to men, women and children who have experienced domestic violence in all its forms. The Healing Centers make referrals to the Wikimanej Kikmanaq to provide holistic and comprehensive support to families. The circles provide an opportunity for families to develop safety plans even if the women intend to reunite with their intimate partner. Often women and their family have their own plans, and we empower and support women, men and children affected by family violence. The Family Healing Centers also have programs for the men, who are usually court mandated. The programs help the men, some being descendants of residential school, decide whether they want to feed their “good or bad wolf ” (from the Cherokee legend “Journey of the Two Wolves”). This redirection of energy to the good wolf helps the men recover from intergenerational trauma, show their feelings, and build meaningful and caring relationships. Once the men have engaged in these programs, then we may bring together the circle with both partners. Wikimanej Kikmanaq differentiates safety issues from discomfort. As long everyone in the circle feels safe and supported, we proceed with the circle. Family knows best what the family needs and will stay in their lives as long as they feel as necessary. Real accountability is to the grandmother or godmother; this is unlike any accountability to the social worker or the judge. Uniqueness of the program Mi’kmaw Family & Children’s Services of Nova Scotia is the only agency practicing Family Group Conferencing in the province of Nova Scotia. Conferencing is what should be the first approach with families. Our leadership fully supports the Wikimanej Kikmanaq FGC Program. All the

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Mi’kmaw chiefs have seen the success of family group circles. The number of children in provincial care has gone down dramatically. Today, among the children with whom we are involved, 90% of the children are with families or in the local community. Our agency works hard to ensure that children are safe, proud of their First Nation culture, families are strong, and communities are strengthened and supported. Most important message about family circles The circle is an opportunity for families to empower themselves and make decisions for themselves. The circle process is a collaborative approach with family, community and professionals to work toward strong healthy Mi’kmaw families in our communities. The circle is authentic, not just another meeting to go to, and it is a part of our families’ traditions. This way of engaging is how Mi’kmaq people have traditionally dealt with conflict. The Wikimanej Kikmanaq FGC Program upholds the integrity and dignity of the family group by helping them take the initiative in planning how to resolve issues in their family. Most importantly each Circle should honor our seven scared teachings of—Honesty, Wisdom, Truth, Humility, Love, Courage and Respect. Wela’lin (Thank You)

Notes



1. The authors give their identities as follows: “Jerry Rosiek is a part of a White detribalized European settler colonial demographic. Jimmy Snyder is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo tribe of North America” (p. 1160). 2. The story of “that family” was mainly prepared from the written notes of the FGDM coordinator and the research observer. 3. The quotations are from Burford, Pennell, and MacLeod, 1995, pp. 67 and 69. Bold in original. 4. Burford, Pennell, and MacLeod, 1995, p. 45. 5. This chapter section is based on the FGDM Implementation Report (Pennell & Burford, 1995) and Outcome Report (Burford & Pennell, 1998a). When other sources are used, they are cited. The full reporting of the findings can be found in Volume 1 of each project report and the evaluation instruments can be found in Volume 2 of these reports. 6. Chapter 2 provides an example of the FGDM conference preparations and process. 7. In all, 32 families had a first-time conference, with another 5 conferences held as follow-ups. 8. The coordinators recorded that 380 agreed to attend, 49 did not, and the remaining 25 were uncertain. Among the 49 not agreeing to attend, 30 wished to send a message. 9. Quotations in this paragraph are from the Implementation Report, Vol. I, p. 104. 10. Implementation Report, p. 134. 11. For an extended discussion of responsibilization in the context of child sexual abuse, see Pennell (2018). 12. In Nain, a number of the families chose to remove themselves to their homes to make their plans, with the conference reconvened the next day.

108  FGDM Conferencing 13. The number of main decision makers is greater than the number of FGDM participants because respondents could identify more than one main decision-maker. 14. On the evaluation form distributed at the end of the conferences, family group participants were asked if they agreed with the plan. In response, 271 (92.5%) of the 293 respondents checked yes in contrast to 7 saying no and the 15 saying don’t know. Implementation Report, Vol. I, p. 223. 15. Implementation Report, Vol. I, p. 226. 16. The remaining nine (7.9%) responded don’t know. 17. The quotations in this section are from the Outcome Report, Vol. I, p. 68. 18. The quotations in this section are from the Outcome Report, Vol. I, pp. 69–73. 19. A list of the 31 indicators can be found in the Outcome Report, Vol. I, pp. 77–78. 20. For a discussion of adolescent violence against parents, see Holt (2015). 21. See Maynard (2001) and Thomas (1998). 22. He is the Administrative Chief of the Miawpukek First Nation. 23. See https://qalipu.ca/about/background/. 24. See Chapter 5 of the Acts of 1990, Children and Family Services Act. Available at https://nslegislature.ca/sites/default/files/legc/statutes/children%20and%20 family%20services.pdf. 25. The term “scoop” was first applied by Johnston (1983) in his report on the placement of Indigenous children in state care. 26. Prevention Services includes the Wikimanej Kikmanaq Family Circle Program, Family & Community Resource Program, and Family Support & Case Aide Program. 27. On the role of godparents, see MacDonald, Glode, and Wien (2005). 28. Differential response, also known as alternative or multiple response, gives child protection services greater flexibility in responding to reports of child maltreatment. Community organizations are encouraged to assist families assessed as low-risk; and child protection services are to focus on substantiated higher-risk situations. See https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/responding/alternative.

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FGDM Conferencing  109 Carrière, M. (2020). Cautiously hopeful: Metafeminist practices in Canada. Montreal, QC, CA: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Doerfler, J., Sinclair, N. J., & Stark, H. K. (Eds.). (2013). Centering Anishinaabeg studies: Understanding the world through stories. East Lansing, MI, US: Michigan State University Press. doi.org/10.14321/j.ctt7ztcbn.10 Fox, N. J., & Alldred, P. (2019). New materialism. In P. Atkinson, S. Delamont, A. Cernat, J. W. Sakshaug, & R. A. Williams (Eds.), SAGE research methods foundations. London, UK: Sage. doi: 10.4135/9781526421036768465 Frank, A. W. (2016). Truth telling, companionship, and witness: An agenda for narrative bioethics. Hastings Center Report, 46(3), 17–21. doi: 10.1002/hast.591. Garroutte, E., & Westcott, K. (2013). The story is a living being: Companionship with stories in Anishinaabe studies. In J. Doerfler, N. J. Sinclair, & H. K. Stark (Eds.), Centering Anishinaabeg studies: Understanding the world through stories (pp. 61– 80). East Lansing, MI, US: Michigan State University Press. doi.org/10.14321/j. ctt7ztcbn.10 Giles, M. V. (2019). Mothering, neoliberalism, and globalization. In L. O. Hallstein, A. O’Reilly, & M. V. Giles (Eds.), The Routledge companion to motherhood (pp. 373– 388). Abingdon, Oxon, UK and New York, NY, US: Routledge. doi:10.4324/ 9781315167848 Hanrahan, M. (2018). Good and bad Indians: Romanticizing the Beothuk and denigrating the Mi’kmaq. In F. Polack (Ed.), Tracing ochre: Changing perspectives on the Beothuk (pp. 33–53). Toronto, Ontario, CA: University of Toronto Press. Holly, D. H. (2000). The Beothuk on the eve of their extinction. Arctic Anthropology, 37(1), 79–95. Holt, A. (Ed.). (2015). Working with adolescent violence and abuse towards parents: Approaches and contexts for intervention. London, UK: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315750781 Johnston, P. (1983). Native children and the child welfare system. Toronto, ON, CA: Canadian Council on Social Development. Kayseas, B. (2015a). Leadership success in overcoming the environmental constraints to Indigenous entrepreneurial activity in Canada. In C. Voyageur, L. Brearley, & B. Calliou, (Eds.). Restorying Indigenous leadership: Wise practices in community development (2nd ed., pp. 233–266). Banff, AB, CA: Banff Centre Press. Kayseas, B. (2015b). Membertou. In C. Voyageur, L. Brearley, & B. Calliou, (Eds.), Restorying Indigenous leadership: Wise practices in community development (2nd ed., pp. 283– 289). Banff, Alberta, CA: Banff Centre Press. Kristensen, T., & Holly, D. (2013). Birds, burials and sacred cosmology of the Indigenous Beothuk of Newfoundland, Canada. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 23(1), 41–53. doi: 10.1017/S0959774313000036. MacDonald, N., Glode, J., & Wien, F. (2005). Respecting aboriginal families: Pathways to resilience in custom adoption and family group conferencing. In M. Ungar (Ed.), Handbook for working with children and youth: Pathways to resilience across cultures and contexts (pp. 357–370). Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage. Maynard, L. (2001). Traditional instrumental music. St. John’s, NL, CA: Heritage Newfoundland & Labrador. Retrieved November 26, 2021, from https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/society/traditional-instrumental-music.php Mi’kmaw Family and Children’s Services of Nova Scotia [MFCS]. (2015, June 9). History. Eskasoni, NS, CA: Author. Retrieved November 13, 2021, from https://mfcsns.ca/ index.php/about/history

110  FGDM Conferencing Mi’kmaw Family and Children’s Services of Nova Scotia [MFCS]. (2020). 2020 annual report. Eskasoni, NS, CA: Author. Retrieved November 16, 2021, from https://mfcsns. ca/images/AGA_Report_2020.pdf Mi’kmaq Resource Centre. (2021). Mi’kmaq. Sydney, NS, CA: University of Cape Breton. Retrieved November 3, 2021, from https://www.cbu.ca/indigenous-affairs/ mikmaq-resource-centre/the-mikmaq/ National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. (2018, December 14). Closing submission – Province of Nova Scotia. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Govt-Nova-ScotiaFinal-Written-Submission.pdf Pennell, J. (2006). Restorative practices and child welfare: Toward an inclusive civil society. In B. Morrison & E. Ahmed (Eds.), Restorative justice and civil society [Special issue]. Journal of Social Issues, 62(2), 257–277. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2006.00450.x. Pennell, J. (2018). The personal is political: The restorative dialectic of child inclusion. In J. Llewellyn & B. Morrison (Eds.) [Special issue]. International Journal of Restorative Justice, 1(3), 413–427. doi: 10.5553/IJRJ/258908912018001003006. Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (1995). Family group decision making: New roles for “old” partners in resolving family violence: Implementation report (Vol. I–II). St. John’s, NL, CA: Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work. Available at https://go.ncsu. edu/fgdm Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (1996). Attending to context: Family group decision making in Canada. In J. Hudson, A. Morris, G. Maxwell, & B. Galaway (Eds.), Family group conferences: Perspectives on policy & practice (pp. 206–220). Annandale, New South Wales, AU: The Federation Press; and New York, NY, US: Criminal Justice Press. Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (2000a). Family group decision making: Protecting children and women. Child Welfare, 79(2), 131–158. Polack, F. (2018). Introduction, de-islanding the Beothuk. In F. Polack (Ed.), Tracing ochre: Changing perspectives on the Beothuk (pp. 3–29). Toronto, ON, CA: University of Toronto Press. Reid, J. (2020). British colonisation in an Atlantic Canadian context. In K. Kehoe & M. Vance (Eds.), Reappraisals of British colonisation in Atlantic Canada, 1700–1930 (pp. 11–22). Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Renouf, M. (1999). Prehistory of Newfoundland hunter-gatherers: Extinctions or adaptations? World Archaeology, 30(3), 403–420. Robinson, A. (2012). “Being and becoming Indian”: Mi’kmaw cultural revival in the Western Newfoundland region. Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 32(1), 1–31. Robinson, A. (2014). Enduring pasts and denied presence: Mi’kmaw challenges to continued marginalization in Western Newfoundland. Anthropologica, 56(2), 383–389, 391-397. Rosiek, J. L., & Snyder, J. (2020). Narrative inquiry and new materialism: Stories as (not necessarily benign) agents. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(10), 1151–1162. doi: 10.1177/ 1077800418784326. Rosiek, J. L., Snyder, J., & Pratt, S. L. (2020). The new materialisms and Indigenous theories of non-human agency: Making the case for respectful anti-colonial engagement. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(3–4), 331–346. doi: 10.1177/1077800419830135. Thomas, G. (1998). The French fairy tale in Newfoundland. St. John’s, NL, CA: Heritage Newfoundland & Labrador. Retrieved November 26, 2021, from https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/society/french-folktales.php

FGDM Conferencing  111 Truman, S. E. (2019). Feminist new materialisms. In P. Atkinson, S. Delamont, A. Cernat, J. W. Sakshaug, & R. A. Williams (Eds.), SAGE Research Methods Foundations (pp. 1–13). London, UK: Sage. doi:10.4135/9781526421036808740 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Honouring the truth, Reconciling for the future: Summary of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Available at https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2015/trc/IR47-2015-eng.pdf Turgeon, B., & Root, K. (2019). Welfare mothers in the United States. In L. O. Hallstein, A. O’Reilly, & M. V. Giles (Eds.), The Routledge companion to motherhood (pp. 103–110). Abingdon, Oxon, UK and New York, NY, US: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315167848 Voyageur, C., Brearley, L., & Calliou, B. (Eds.). (2015). Restorying Indigenous leadership: Wise practices in community development (2nd ed.). Banff, AB, CA: Banff Centre Press. Wien, F., & Glode, J. (2011). Evaluating family group conferencing in a First Nation setting: An example of university-First Nation child welfare agency collaboration. In S. Léveillé, N. Trocmé, I. Brown, & C. Chamberland (Eds.), Research-community partnerships in child welfare (pp. 139–154). Toronto, ON, CA: Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare/Centre d’excellence pour la protection et le bien-être des enfants. Available at www.cecw-cepb.ca

Chapter 5

Concluding Possibilities— Cascading Trust in Families and Cultural Networks

“Who and whatever we are, we need to make-with.” – Donna Haraway (2016, p. 102)

Restorative making-with This book began with an unexpected conclusion. Contrary to my initial qualms about safety but fulfilling my hopes for participatory democracy, I learned from my research in Canada and the US that a restorative approach is remarkably suited to overturning family violence. Thus, the book’s conclusion speaks squarely to current questioning of carceral interventions into people’s lives. An area provoking extensive controversy is whether gendered and intergenerational violence necessitate government intervention. Asking why a restorative approach was suitable for upending family violence, I proposed that family groups as cultural units have the capacity to defamiliarize, that is, make strange and push aside, gendered and intergenerational violence. I further proposed that centering families and placing external institutions on the circumference can displace societal pressures warping and exploiting cultural networks. Societal institutions, while on the periphery, are still available to give support in ways that families and their specific members want. My theory of change took sustenance from Donna Haraway’s (2016) words to “make kin” (p. 102), based more on liking than likeness. Within Haraway’s feminist new materialism, I articulated a theory of feminist kin-making, identifying the generation of affinity across likely and unlikely partners in cultural networks and between these networks and outside groups, particularly government institutions. Haraway’s admonition at the start of this final chapter is to “make-with.” Her counsel is both pragmatic and ethical: We can never escape our embeddedness with each other, and our survival depends on carrying out the obligation to caringly tend, not violently extract. Restorative making-with is a collective way to grasp the reality of family violence and defamiliarize it. The collective players, to use Haraway’s DOI: 10.4324/9781003105374-5

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terms, encompass the “who”—the families, cultural networks, and local communities—and the “whatever”—the discourses, systems, and ecologies. Never apart while always differentiating, these entangled players “intra-act,” rather than interacting as separate beings, and “each is constituted as responsible for the other” (Barad, 2015, p. 399, 402). This is the ethic of feminist kin-making.

Storylines of feminist kin-making Narrative inquiry, drawing on new feminist materialism and Indigenous scholarship, was my guide in writing the book chapters. Based on my experience and the work of many involved with a restorative approach, the first chapter teased out four main narrative threads of a restorative approach to family violence: These are storylines of feminist kin-making. The first thread, restoring family and cultural leadership, is essential to rebuilding the primacy of cultural units in countering family violence. The second, storytelling for hope and recovery, puts the families’ pain on the table and inspires the empathy for healing. The third, regulating responsively the healing process, entails supporting the family group’s leadership while applying the least control necessary to protect family members. And the fourth, cascading trust and non-violence, builds momentum through coalitions to prevent slipping back into neglectful or over-controlling responses to family violence. This final chapter delves further into the fourth narrative thread. No binary answer For each of these narrative threads, an inherent contradictory tension is identified. The second chapter turns to a family group with an extensive history of gendered and intergenerational coercion and violence and examines how they navigated these contradictory tensions in conferencing. The cultural assumptions embedded in NL magic tales are evident in the strategies that the conference participants deployed to keep their deliberations from stalling out. What the example, and the FGDM Project as a whole, cannot answer is whether government protection remains indispensable in some situations of family violence. The referred families were already far into systems of public regulation, and they urgently required the economic resources and human services included in their plans and funded by government. I do not believe there is a binary yes/no answer to government intervention into family violence. I do know that families and communities, once convened by the FGDM coordinators, were quite inventive and caring in their strategies for stopping family violence. Crucial was the public authorities’ responsiveness to the leadership of family groups. Likewise, as documented by Creative Interventions, (2012) community-­ based interventions, once organized, catalyze the ingenuity of people to stop

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interpersonal violence. Not involving the criminal legal, immigration, and child welfare systems is essential to undocumented families who might be deported and to marginalized communities who have repeatedly experienced injustice from government, business, and civil sectors.1 What is crucial is listening with open ears to those who have been harmed, recognizing that they are not only those immediately targeted by the violence, and collaboratively determining when, where, and what external intervention upholding individual and collective rights is critically demanded. Hybrid of allies The third chapter asks why the FGDM Project became such an early demonstration of the capacity of conferencing to deal with severe family violence and how local organizing efforts set the stage for the project’s responsive system of governance. Dismayed by the province’s sorely lacking response to child sexual and physical abuse, senior government officials quickly came on board to support the planning efforts. Within the province, feminists were searching for ways to support women and children beyond the shelter doors and favored an approach that amplified the voice of women in their informal networks and communities. The alliances of the exogenous institutions made a difference to how FGDM was conducted. The project planners were a hybrid of community spokespersons, civil servants, women’s advocates, and university researchers, who together created a system of participatory decision making for the project, locally and provincially. Turning to families and culture Chapter 4 dug into the FGDM evaluation to identify the families’ achievements in overcoming family violence and, using narrative inquiry, pulled out how conferencing reset family narratives from problem to solution. Conferencing on its own, the chapter acknowledged, can only go so far in revitalizing families and cultural networks. A profound revitalization can be found in the Mi’kmaq forming their own band in Western NL after years of colonization suppressing their language and cultural identity. One province away, the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia, after years of government-imposed family separation, took control of their communities and called on their families to safeguard all family members. Wanting FGC for own family After the conclusion of the FGDM Project, I continued to hear from so many people on so many continents that they wanted FGC for themselves. I was struck by the parallels I heard between people in a US substance treatment

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center (Pennell, 2005a) and in crime-torn Guatemala (Roby, Pennell, Rotabi, Bunkers, & de Uclés, 2015); both suffered from the devastation to family life caused by narcotic profiteering and both placed hope in families to work together to make lives better. The most telling came from dialogue with women in hiding because they had nearly died at the hands of their intimate partners (Pennell & Francis, 2005). Government protection (e.g., issuing new social security numbers) was essential to their safety. The isolation and fear, though, were so disheartening. They knew they personally could not have a conference because they would be found by their former partners, but they desperately wanted such a kinship network around their children. Based on the experiences of the FGDM Project and elsewhere, this chapter highlights take-away messages for others seeking to institute a restorative approach to family violence. These messages are about cautions on how to proceed and hopes about turning to families to push family violence out of their homes.

Messages of caution and hope The first cautionary message is to look closely at government rationales for not continuing successful programs. And then to dig down into other explanations but not to stop there. There are so many positive routes for removing obstacles and engaging families and their communities in overturning family violence. What follows is a sketch of some possibilities, by no means a complete inventory. Don’t assume costs are always the issue for government When the federal funding for the FGDM Project ran out, the province had planned to take over the program if it proved successful, and the participating communities all asked for continuation of the program (Chapter 3). Senior civil servants had been incredibly helpful in initiating the project and had wanted to keep it in place. The two forewords, one from Nain leaders and the other from the Director of Public Prosecutions at the time, both speak to their high regard for engaging families in decision making. The province, however, responded that its coffers were bare and could not maintain conferencing. True, NL public moneys, always low, had been depleted by the fishing moratorium and resulting massive unemployment and by the federal reduction of transfer payments to provinces. The province’s rationale, however, is undermined by the cost analyses of holding conferences and providing services to families after conferencing. The FGDM expenditures (e.g., travel, food) for a family’s first conference averaged $304 (Canadian dollars) for each child. More to the point, contrary to fears that families would make exorbitant demands in their plans,

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the economic analysis by Andy Rowe Consultants, Inc, 1997) reported no statistically significant difference in the total public expenditures (including provincial care, the most high-priced item) before and after conferencing and between the project and comparison families. Fewer project than comparison children entered care in the post-period, but reflecting the seriousness of their needs, the project children in care had more costly placements (e.g., foster care vs. group homes) than the comparison children. Recapped in Pennell (2005b), the project’s findings on costs were similar to those from Californian and British studies of conferencing of the time (e.g., Marsh & Crow, 1998). A 2010–2011 British comparative study found that conferencing had minimal impact on reducing state care for children at medium-risk of entering care but a substantial impact for children at highrisk of entering care (Marsh, 2021). As discussed in Chapter 4, the results for the project family showed increases in the safety of children and women while those for the comparison families went in the reverse direction (Pennell & Burford, 2000a). Costs need to be viewed in terms of what they yield for the families, not just the government’s bottom line, and the contributions that the informal networks provide to relatives are of real value in meeting the hopes of families and purposes of child welfare (Roo & Jagtenberg, 2021). Beware of risk aversion and slippage into familiar paradigms Some plausible explanations for discontinuing the FGDM Project pertain to government at multiple levels: the lingering effects of years of the (ousted) federal conservative government sidelining progressive measures; the lack of political will at senior levels of the provincial government to champion the program; and inertia at the departmental level, leaving funds in current expense columns rather than transferring even a fraction to support conferencing. This inaction occurred in the context of the public eye moving away from the child sexual and physical abuse scandals spurring government support in the first place for FGDM. As a result, practice settled into a familiar paradigm of protecting children from their parents rather than engaging the family group in helping child and adult members (Braithwaite, Braithwaite, & Burford, 2019). The experience with a restorative approach in the Western Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) sheds light on developments in NL. From the start, restorative programs in BC were built upon the strong foundation of the peacebuilding tradition of Howard Zehr (1995, 2002) and others from the Mennonite church and then continued to expand, including the establishment of FGC under the auspices of child welfare.2 In the youth and adult offending field of practice, crucial to development of restorative programming was the early leadership of the BC attorney general (Asadullah

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& Morrison, 2021). The strong collaboration of community, government, and university maintained the centrality of community advocates in setting programmatic directions. When it came to serious offences, including domestic violence, however, the views of BC government agencies and community organizations split. Those in public agencies expressed strong reservations about expanding the community programming beyond non-serious offences: “If you do RJ with seriously violent offenders then the society might not accept it. The victims might not accept it, and it might not be good for the offenders either” (Asadullah & Morrison, 2021, p. 191). In contrast, the community spokespersons emphasized the potential benefits, not the acceptability, of a restorative approach in violent situations. Thus, risk-adverse public officials can dampen efforts to institute a restorative approach to family violence in the legal system while in the same jurisdiction this approach is applied in child welfare. Check which system is making the most referrals to a program The FGDM Project’s focus on family violence did not appear to be the cause of the NL government’s inaction to sustain conferencing. The main source of the project’s referrals was child welfare, a service regularly dealing with high levels of gendered and intergenerational violence (Chapter 1). Such a service is unlikely to refrain from making referrals with IPV given the inseparability of child and adult violence in the lives of families with whom it is involved. Contrasting two restorative formats—peacemaking circles and FGCs— helps to explain this divergence between restorative programs addressing offences and FGC addressing care and protection of children. In the comparison below, what becomes quickly evident is that the two formats have different systems (more or less) ensuring their participants and support. In situations of family violence, both peacemaking circles and FGC in the US seek to increase the safety of homes and improve relationships (Pennell, Burford, Sasson, Packer, & Smith, 2021). Their origins, however, differ: Peacemaking circles were created in reaction to the ineffectiveness of the legal system in stopping IPV while FGC was created in reaction to child separation from families of marginalized groups. Reflecting their origins, peacemaking circles are characterized as restorative programs that seek to change norms to discourage violence; conferencing is characterized as family-based forums that seek to strengthen support networks to help families. Given their distinct purposes, the two programs each have a specific referral source: The criminal legal system refers persons causing harm to peacemaking circles; the child welfare system refers families to FGCs. In the

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current service context, the referral source is what has maintained programs in terms of their legal mandate, resourcing, and participants. Consider the impact of the type of legislation on delivering conferences Legislation and policy can certainly disable moving forward with a restorative approach to family violence. Such has been the case in numerous countries (see Chapter 1) and in Nova Scotia, with the exception of the Mi’kmaq. While Nova Scotia has eased access to restorative justice in its judicial system, the province has kept in place its moratorium on applying the approach to sexual and domestic violence3 (Augusta-Scott, Harrison, & Singer, 2017). The passage of enabling legislation, however, may not be an effective strategy for moving forward with a restorative approach to gendered violence. NL passed enabling legislation permitting but not prescribing FGC, and to date, child welfare has not restarted FGC (Chapter 3). In jurisdictions where statute prescribes and funds FGC, the high volume of conferencing testifies to workers including, rather than excluding, families in need. For example, the conferencing program in the US state of Hawai’i had held 20,000 conferences by its 25th anniversary in 2021.4 In NZ, despite COVID disruptions, 8,500 FGCs were held in the year 2020–2021 alone (Tukaki, 2021). The type of child welfare legislation on conferencing does matter, but legislation always needs realigning to fit the values of families and their cultural networks. NZ is an informative example. Keep programs closely tied to cultural networks and local communities Maori children are greatly overrepresented in the NZ child welfare system: Within the general population, Maori are 27% of those between 0 and 17 years but form 70% of the children in care. To counter the systemic racism in child welfare, NZ is returning to the early advice of Pau-te-Ata-tu that Maori children are a “community responsibility” and this community must guide care and protection of their children (Rangihau, 1986, p. 75). A recent and comprehensive review of NZ care and protection (Tukaki, 2021) proposes steps to move toward community responsibility. One step is holding informal and frequent meetings with the family group, called “Hui-ā-Whānau” to address issues without the regulation imposed by government; however, these meetings lack the authority of FGC. Although not practiced, the FGC legislation has room to permit the families’ communities to take part in and lead the conferences and approve the resources for the families’ plans. This reassignment of authority could

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lead toward devolution of the care and protection of Maori children to the Maori community. Attend to the needs of all family members Community control can advance the safety and wellbeing of all family members. Nova Scotia legislation transferred child welfare responsibilities to the Mi’kmaq (Chapter 4). The Mi’kmaw Family & Children’s Services of Nova Scotia (MFCS) carries out child welfare services with a commitment to attending to the needs of all family members. As explained by Kristen Basque, these integrated programs work toward the safety and wellbeing of women, children, and men. What holds these programs together is the Mi’kmaw traditional values and customs. MFCS provides healing centers as places of safety and recovery for the women and children. The healing centers also provide groups for the men who have caused harm, of whom many were harmed by the residual effects of residential schooling in their communities. In groups, the men learn how to redirect their energy and care for their family. Once the men have completed the program, they may then join their partners in the family circles. Children are at the heart of the circles, and they are included in ways that respect their capacities and wishes. Another round of the circle may be held so that the children can directly participate. Be mindful of the workers MFCS recognizes the toll on workers of listening to suffering from gendered and intergenerational violence and from the societal violence perpetrated on families. At the conclusion of family circles, the agency debriefs with social workers, so they do not struggle on their own with the emotional impact of the circle. Workers need ongoing supervision and training so that they can relate caringly with the families. This training needs to focus on principles, rather than rigid protocols, helping workers to respond with flexibility while holding fast to ethics. In Wales, social work educator5 and former FGC coordinator, Abyd Quinn-Aziz stresses upholding principles and offering good training to prevent “shortcut practices, such as ringing families up to do the preparation rather than going out to the homes” (personal communication, December 1, 2021). Supports for good practice build trust between workers and families, as evident in the experience in Quebec. In the Eeyou Istchee (Cree) territory of James Bay, Quebec, Canada, FGC is referred to as Peyakutenuu Niishtam or Family First:6 It puts the family first and the family is first in decision making. “Training in Peyakutenuu Niishtam helps staff feel more confident in working with families, and once they feel more sure of themselves, they are better able to soften the approach

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and customize it to the families’ trust level” (L. Tomatuk, personal communication, October 18, 2021). Doing the deep work with the feminist community Before convening conferences, Susan MacLeod, the FGDM coordinator in St. John’s, knew that she needed to consult closely with community panel members that she could trust to keep her from “doing anything that would hurt women” (Chapter 3). She did the careful groundwork so that she had the feminist community on board for providing such guidance. The same care is evident in the lead-up to initiating Transforming Justice Australia,7 a program for those who have experienced sexual harm and family violence. Jane Bolitho and Thea Deakin-Greenwood are “doing the gruelling work of laying a foundation for this practice, including regularly hearing from and consulting with survivors, undertaking community and other stakeholder consultations, developing training, and working across the community and criminal justice sector” (Rossner &Forsyth, 2021, p. 369). In England, Sharon Inglis (personal communication, November 10, 2021), a well-seasoned FGC coordinator and trainer, knew that far too often communities fail to do the “deep work” necessary for building the multi-agency partnerships crucial for sustaining good practice with family violence. In response, she and others have brought together service providers to consider the impact of their operating in isolation from each other and strategies for forming cross-system collaborations with families. The city of Leeds is an exemplar of such practice. Establishing restorative jurisdictions In Northern England, Leeds set forth to become the most child-friendly city in the country. To achieve this aspiration, the municipality adopted a whole-family framework (called Family Valued) of working with everyone in the family, with a clear commitment to equity and inclusion (Featherstone, White, & Morris, 2014). An early evaluation reported that extensive training was provided, attracting participants from multiple sectors, and helping to shift the culture in social work toward supporting families (Mason, Ferguson, Morris, Munton, & Sen, 2017). Building off its existing FGC program, Leeds expanded into domestic violence services, adopting a coordinated, cross-system process for assessing referrals, and instituted programming for men who abuse. An outcome evaluation carried out 16 months into Family Valued found statistically significant drops of children in care and children seen as in need of intervention (Mason et al., 2017). These findings are of special note because overall in England during this period, the number of children in care rose

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and the children in need held steady (Sen & Webb, 2019). Other outcomes going in a positive direction (although not achieving statistical significance) included better school attendance, more children and youth exiting care to their families, and fewer re-referrals for domestic violence. Creating international learning communities for researchers Helpful texts are available on different ways of conducting research on a restorative approach and reporting findings in ethical ways. A recent addition to the literature is a compendium in which researchers reflect on their quite varied methodological frameworks for studying FGC (Roo & Jagtenberg, 2021). My book on FGDM contributes to the discussion of methodology by applying narrative inquiry informed by feminist new materialism and Indigenous scholarship. Here, what I want to emphasize is just as families and workers need a flexible and supportive system of responsive regulation so do researchers. What we (including myself ) can benefit from is a loosely knit community into which we can step for ideas and energy. To fit this purpose, law professor Jennifer Llewellyn8 hosts an international learning community based on “commitment and intention to which we can contribute and take away wisdom.” She further explains why an international community is beneficial: “You see yourself better in other national contexts … and then you can bring those insights back home” ( J. Llewellyn, personal communication, November 18, 2021). This international learning community can take different forms, such as conferences and forums bringing together family spokespeople, practitioners, and researchers; advisory boards of projects and journals; and quick-­ response groups to government funding decisions. In writing this volume, I was informed by partners in different parts of the globe. I know their companionship has made this book far stronger than I ever could have done on my own.

Cascading trust in families and cultural networks All the messages that I sketched in this chapter and across the volume are ways to channel energy into trusting families and cultural networks to take responsible action. The cautionary messages instruct on analyzing the obstacles and those about hope urge persistence and creativity in circumventing the obstacles. Trust is not lightly given, nor should it be, especially in the context of family violence. Trust building requires the hard work of listening closely, forming partnerships, upholding rights to safety and wellbeing, and responding nimbly to openings for change.

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We can never do all this on our own: To use Haraway’s words, we can only “make-with.” Together, though, we can generate cascades of trust that make this a world in which we can all thrive. The final word comes from an adolescent from whom we can take hope for families. She took responsibility for writing down her family group’s plan during the private time at the conference. Afterwards when asked for her thoughts on the plan, she beamed and responded, “I wrote it, didn’t I?” (Pennell & Burford, 1996, p. 217).

Notes

1. A dialog on FGC and community-based interventions can be found in Pennell and Kim (2010). 2. The BC Ministry of Children and Family Development website posts information sheets for different participants in child welfare FGCs. For the parent sheet, see https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/public-safety-and-emergency-services/public-safety/protecting-children/collaborative-planning-and-decision-­m aking-­i nchild-welfare/familygroupconferencingforparents_factsheet.pdf. 3. Province of Nova Scotia. (2019, July 16). Changes to restorative justice will improve province’s criminal justice system [news release]. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://novascotia.ca/news/release/?id=20190716003. 4. Epic ‘Ohana. (2021, September 24). Celebrating 25 years of ‘Ohana Conference [video]. Honolulu, HI, US: Author. Retrieved December 16, 2021, from https:// www.epicohana.org/news/celebrating-25-years-of-ohana-conference. 5. Cardiff University, Wales. 6. Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay. (2021, March 1). Family First (Family Group Conferencing), Peyakutenuu Niishtam. Chisasibi, QC, CA: Author. Retrieved November 17, 2021, from https://www.creehealth.org/ services/family-first-family-group-conferencing. 7. Transforming Justice Australia. Retrieved December 23, 2021, from https://ctbmclc.org.au/transforming-justice-Australia. 8. Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

References Andy Rowe Consultants, Inc. (1997, November). Comparative costs and cost-effectiveness of Family Group Decision Making Project: Technical report. St. John’s, NL, CA: Author. Asadullah, M., & Morrison, B. (2021). “Communities are not at the periphery, rather they are at the centre of restorative justice in BC”: An inquiry into the praxis of restorative justice in British Columbia, Canada. Contemporary Justice Review, 24(2), 172–96. doi: 10.1080/10282580.2021.1881893. Augusta-Scott, T., Harrison, P., & Singer, V. (2017). Creating safety, respect, and equality for women: Lessons from the intimate partner violence and restorative justice movement. In T. August-Scott, K. Scott, & L. M. Tutty (Eds.), Innovations in interventions to address intimate partner violence: Research and practice (pp. 157–173). New York, NY, US: Routledge. Barad, K. (2015). TransMaterialities: Trans/Matter/Realities and queer political imaginings. GLQ, 21(2–3), 387–422. doi: 10.1215/10642684-2843239.

Concluding Possibilities  123 Braithwaite, J., Braithwaite, V., & Burford, G. (2019). Broadening the applications of responsive regulation. In G. Burford, J. Braithwaite, & V. Braithwaite (Eds.), Restorative and responsive human services (pp. 20–37). New York, NY, US: Taylor & Francis/Routledge. Creative Interventions. (2012). Creative interventions toolkit: A practical guide to stop interpersonal violence. (2012). Chico, CA, US and Edinburgh, Scotland: AK Press. Available at https://www.creative-interventions.org/ Featherstone, B., White, S., & Morris, K. (2014). Re-imaging child protection: Towards humane social work with families. Bristol, UK: Policy Press Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the chthulucene. Durham, NC, US and London, UK: Duke University Press. doi:10.1515/9780822373780-007 Marsh, P., & Crow, G. (1998). Family group conferences in child welfare. Oxford, UK: Blackwells. Marsh, P. (2021). Understanding family group conferences: Questions, issues and principles. In A. de Roo & R. Jagtenberg (Eds.), Family group conference research: Reflections and ways forward (pp. 43–58). The Hague, Netherlands: Eleven International. Mason, P., Ferguson, H., Morris, K., Munton, T., & Sen, R. (2017). Leeds Family Valued evaluation report. London, UK: UK Department for Education. Pennell, J. (2005a). Collaborative planning and ongoing training. In J. Pennell & G. Anderson (Eds.), Widening the circle: The practice and evaluation of family group conferencing with children, youths, and their families (pp. 73–87). Washington, DC, US: NASW Press. Pennell, J. (2005b). Costs of family group conferencing. Appendix in J. Pennell & G. Anderson (Eds.), Widening the circle: The practice and evaluation of family group conferencing with children, youths, and their families (pp. 156–158). Washington, DC, US: NASW Press. Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (1996). Attending to context: Family group decision making in Canada. In J. Hudson, A. Morris, G. Maxwell, & B. Galaway (Eds.), Family group conferences: Perspectives on policy & practice (pp. 206–220). Annandale, New South Wales, AU: The Federation Press; and New York, NY, US: Criminal Justice Press. Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (2000a). Family group decision making: Protecting children and women. Child Welfare, 79(2), 131–158. Pennell, J., Burford, G., Sasson, E., Packer, H., & Smith, E. L. (2021). Family and community approaches to intimate partner violence: Restorative programs in the United States. Violence Against Women, 27(10), 1608–1629. doi: 10.1177/1077801220945030. Pennell, J., & Francis, S. (2005). Safety conferencing: Toward a coordinated and inclusive response to safeguard women and children. In J. Ptacek (Ed.), Violence Against Women, 11(5), 666–692. doi: 10.1177/1077801205274569. Pennell, J., & Kim, M. (2010). Opening conversations across cultural, gender, and generational divides: Family and community engagement to stop violence against women and children. In J. Ptacek (Ed.), Restorative justice and violence against women (pp. 177– 192). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press. Rangihau, J. (1986). Pau-te-Ata-tu (Daybreak): Report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori perspective for the Department of Social Welfare. Wellington, NZ: Department of Social Welfare, Government Printing Office. Available at https://msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/archive/1988-puaoteatatu. pdf

124  Concluding Possibilities Roby, J. L., Pennell, J., Rotabi, K., Bunkers, K. M., & de Uclés, S. (2015). Contextual adaptation of family group conferencing model: Early evidence from Guatemala. British Journal of Social Work, 45, 2281–2297. doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcu053. Roo, A., & Jagtenberg, R. (Eds.). (2021). Family group conference research: Reflections and ways forward. The Hague, Netherlands: Eleven International. Rossner, M., & Forsyth, M. (2021). Is now the time for restorative justice for survivors of sexual assault. The International Journal of Restorative Justice, 4(3), 365–373. doi: 10.5553/ TIJRJ.000094. Sen, R., & Webb, C. (2019). Exploring the declining rates of state social work intervention in an English local authority using family group conferences. Children and Youth Services Review, 106, 1–8. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104458. Tukaki, M. (2021, July). The initial report of the Oranga Tamariki Ministerial Advisory Board. Wellington, NZ: Oranga Tamariki-Ministry for Children. Available at https://www. beehive.govt.nz/sites/default/f iles/2021-09/SWRB082-OT-Report-FA-ENGWEB.PDF Zehr, H. (1995). Changing lenses: A new focus for crime and justice. Scottdale, PA, US: Herald Press. Zehr, H. (2002). The little book of restorative justice. Intercourse, PA, US: Good Books.

Index

African American families, 1–2, 7, 11, 21 Aoteoroa, See, New Zealand (Aotearoa) apology 8, 18–19, 58 Basque, Kristen, 100–101, 119 Bay St. George Women’s Centre, 68–70, 81 Beothuk, 98 Bolitho, Jane, 120 Braithwaite, John, 19, 22 British Columbia: restorative approach, 116–17 Campbell, Stella, 97–98 Canada, 29–30 carceral intervention, 3, 11, 20, 32, 47, 67, 112 caregiving, 5 cascading, 59, 61, 113, 121; theory, 29 Catholic Church: child sexual abuse within, 66; support for FGC, 69–70; trust in, 66, 70, 75; child maltreatment, 24, 95, 108; See also, family violence child welfare services, 7, 11, 12, 25–26, 32, 76, 96; definition, 30; Indigenous, 100, 101–102, 118–19; racial inequity, 2, 11, 100, 118 children: role in conferencing, 46, 49, 52–55, 96, 103–104, 119 circles, 30, 31, 53, 55, 56, 100, 102–107, 117, 119 Colorizing Restorative Justice, 9 Community: definition, 11; role in FGC, 1, 4, 6, 17, 27, 57, 69, 80–81, 103, 113–14, 117–18, 121

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 16, 31 Convention on the Rights of the Child, 14, 16 correctional services: role in conferencing, 47, 49–51, 55, 56–58, 78 Creative Interventions, 113–14 Cree, See, Eeyou Istchee (Cree) criminal legal system, 18–20, 117, 120; British, 8, 9; racial inequity, 9 cultural networks, 2, 3, 6, 12, 26–27, 30, 48, 60, 88, 97, 112–14, 121 Deakin-Greenwood, Thea, 120 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, 31 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 16 defamiliarization, 1–2, 4, 23, 26, 30, 43, 60, 112 differential response, 106, 108 domestic violence, See, intimate partner violence Eeyou Istchee (Cree), 119; See also, Tomatuk, Leslie Elders: role in conferencing, 71–72, 74, 93; See also, older women English settlers, 5, 43, 69, 74 Family: roles, 4–6 family circles, See, circles family group conferencing, 7, 12–13, 17– 18, 23, 72; costs, 115–116; outcomes, 80, 101, 107; primacy of family, 3, 6, 48, 50–51, 57, 81, 90, 91–92, 119–20;

126 Index role of the state, 28, 55, 77–81, 106, 115–16, 118; training and support, 79–91, 119–20 family group decision making, See, family group conferencing Family Group Decision Making Project: funding, 77–79; outcomes, 88–90, 92–96, 114; planning, 67, 77–81; training, 79–80 family plans, 91, 103, 105 family violence: definition, 2, 17, 67; government intervention, 106, 112, 113, 117; misrecognition, 2, 4, 25–26; restorative approach, 3–4, 12–13, 20, 23–24, 26–29, 43, 47, 50–52, 62, 89, 95, 120; See also, intimate partner violence; child maltreatment; shaming Family Violence Initiative, 66–67, 77–78 Family Violence Prevention Division, 77 feminist community, 68–69, 74–76, 120; racial justice, 11–12 feminist critiques, 11, 67 feminist kin-making, 23, 26, 29, 46, 61, 62; definition, 4–5, 20; theory, 6, 112–13 feminist movement: Canadian, 29, 66–67, 68 feminist new materialism, 4–5, 88–89, 112–13, 121 femocrat, See, state feminism FGDM, See, Family Group Decision Making fisheries, 43–44 food: role in conferencing, 45, 57, 70, 93, 115 forgiving, 18–19 Frank, Arthur, 89, 97 French settlers, 68–69, 97–98 Fry, Margery, 8, 9 Garroutte, Eva Marie, 89, 97 Gender: identity, 3, 5, 11; norms, 3, 69, 91; oppression, 9–10, 15, 27, 43, 62, 113 Glode, Joan, 101 Government: funding & support, 66, 74, 77–81, 115–116; intervention in conferences, 62, 113; legislation, 13–14,

30, 31, 78, 82, 118–19; trust in, 20–21, 67, 75, 76, 81 Guatemala, 114–15 Haraway, Donna, 4, 112–13, 122 Hawai’i, 118 Hui-a-Whanau, 118 Igbo, 5 Immediate Response Circles (IRC), 105–106 Indigenous peoples: foster care, 100, 108; government relations, 9–11, 14–17, 67, 73, 98–99; incarceration, 22; impact, 60; rates 21–22 intimate partner violence, 21, 45, 48, 70, 106, 115, 120; See also, family violence Inuit women, 70–71 Iris Kirby House, 61, 76 Irish settlers, 43, 74 Jack tales, 44–45, 51, 55, 58 jakatars, 69, 82, 97–98 John Howard Society, 49, 56, 61, 62–63 kin-making, See, feminist kin-making Kuokkanen, Rauna, 10 Labrador Inuit Association, 72 Labrador Inuit Health Commission, 77, 79 Leeds Family Valued (England), 120 Llewellyn, Jennifer, 121 MacLeod, Susan, 79, 120 magic tales, 43–46, 51–52, 54, 55, 60, 113 manipulation, 3, 92 Maori, 13–15, 30, 31, 79, 101, 118–19 Martin, Helen, 100 masculinities, 24–25, 61 McClung, Nellie, 68, 82 Mennonite church, 116 merchant class, 43–4, 75 MFCS, See, Mi’kmaw Family & Children’s Services of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq, 17, 68, 69, 88, 98–104, 114, 119 Mi’kmaw Family & Children’s Services of Nova Scotia, 100, 101, 119 Mi’kmaw Family Healing Centers, 101 Mothers: abuse by children, 96, 108; responsibilization, 91

Index 127 Nain Women’s Group, 71, 74 Nain (NL), 46, 65–66, 70–74, 77–80, 93–94, 107 narrative inquiry, 89, 113, 114, 121, 97; See also, Frank, Arthur; Garroutte, Eva Marie; Westcott, Kathleen narrative resetting, 88, 90, 92, 99 National Compadres Network, 10, 31 Neoliberalism, 97; personal responsibility, 7 New Zealand (Aotearoa), 9, 12–16, 29, 31, 80, 118–19 Newfoundland: class, 75; economic conditions, 67–69, 75–76; history, 44, 75–76, 98–99 Newfoundland Status of Women Council, 76 North Carolina Family Group Conferencing Project, 1–2, 92 Nova Scotia, 99–107 Nunatsiavut, 72–73, 82 Nzegwu, Nkiru Uwechia, 5, 15 older women, 5 oral traditions, See, traditional knowledge Pau-te-Ata-tu, 14–15, 118 peacemaking circles, 7, 117 Peg Bearskin, 44–46, 51, 54, 55, 57, 60, 62, 70 Peyakutenuu Niishtam, 119 Police: role in FGC, 17, 18, 21, 48, 54, 74, 77, 87–88 policing, 11, 21, 31 Port au Port Peninsula (NL), 68–70, 87–88, 97–99 post-traumatic stress, 25 Quinn-Aziz, Abyd, 119 racial justice, 11–12 recidivism, 32 reparative justice, 8–9 residential schools, 70, 72, 100, 106, 119 responsive regulation, 18, 22, 27–28, 62, 67, 81, 121; hybrid of allies, 114; hybridization of governance, 28, 56, 57, 81; researcher international learning community, 121

restorative justice: benefits, 7, 20, 23–25; contrary views, 3–4, 19, 21, 92, 117; definition, 3, 19; in governmental regulation, 22; prohibitions, 23; Western traditions, 8–9 rights, 5, 14–16, 18, 22, 31, 46, 61, 114, 121 Rosiek, Jerry, 87–89 sacred medicines, 103 Saputjinik, 71–72, 73 Serbia, 5 shaming, 9, 19, 24, 58, 70, 88 Snyder, Jimmy, 87–89 social assistance, 7, 68, 76 social workers, 26, 77, 91, 97, 104, 105, 106, 119 St. John’s (NL), 61, 66, 71, 74–76, 79, 80, 94 state feminism, 74–75 storytelling, 27, 43–47, 52, 61, 88, 98, 113 suffragettes, 8 Tallbear, Kim, 5 Tomatuk, Leslie, 119 traditional knowledge, 43, 72, 101 transformative justice, 20, 21, 113–114; See also, Creative Interventions Transforming Justice Australia, 120 turtle, 103 unemployment insurance, 68 US Air Force Base (Stephenville, NL), 68 victim support circles, 31 victimization, 5, 22, 55 Westcott, Kathleen, 89 white supremacy, 10–11, 20, 30 Wikimanej Kikmanaq Family Circles Program, 101–105 women’s leadership, 80 women’s shelters, 65, 76, 80 working class: resistance, 44 Zehr, Howard, 116