Through the many inquires which have been made over the past decades in to the Canadian justice system(Brizinski,1993,395) it has over and over again been stated that the present justice system has and is failing Aboriginal people. It is not suited for their cultural needs and does nothing to rehabilitate offenders but rather does the offender more harm then good. It does not address the underlying conditions causing criminal behavior or in assessing what specific needs must be addressed to rehabilitate. The purpose of this paper is to examine why the justice system fails for First Nations persons and alternative rehabilitation methods used by Aboriginal people, comprised of Aboriginal people, for Aboriginal people, in hopes to rehabilitate offenders and prevent criminal behavior in the Aboriginal community from precontact to today. Through the attempts of Aboriginal people to take control of their own destinys in the ever going struggle to attain self-government I will examine the aims and structure of one of these alternative rehabilitation methods, the Sentencing Circle used today to address the need to return to community based Restorative Justice Programs in the Aboriginal communityIt is the belief of first nations that the healing process and renewal of relationships are the essential ingredients for the building of healthy First Nations communities. First nations realize that the current justice process does not address the real issues at hand nor does it fit into their traditional forms of achieving justice. In fact, the current justice process systematically removes the offenders from their people and communities effectively severing all ties and relationships the individuals may have. In actuality, according to First Nations, no rehabilitation or correction of the individual occurs. In most cases, the individual returns home and assumes the same behavior which got the individual into the system in the first place. Thus, ...
