Changing the mindset of non-Aboriginals is the first step in maintaining a country where everyone can live at peace, says a retired provincial court judge.
John Reilly was one of the four panelists Anthropology Society’s Aboriginal Affairs Symposium at the Red Deer College on Saturday.
In 1977, Reilly was the youngest person appointed to the Provincial Court of Alberta at the age of 30. Reilly retired in 2008 after more than 30 years as a judge largely in the areas near Canmore, and Cochrane including the Stoney Nakota First Nations reserve in Morley.
Reilly said for the first five years in his career, he handed out sentences to lawbreakers by the book.
“I knew nothing about them,” Reilly told the auditorium at the Margaret Parsons Theatre.
“That was sorta the wisdom of the day. The judge was supposed to be objective. You don’t go out and learn about the people who are coming into your court. You just deal with them as they come in. You treated everybody equally by treating everybody the same. And that’s what I did in those five years.”
Reilly said his views on crime and punishment began to change in the 1990s with the release of the Cawsey Report, a report on the Criminal Justice system and its impact on Aboriginal people in Alberta and the amendments to the Criminal Code.
Before 1996, there were no provisions in the Criminal Code that outlined what judges were supposed to consider when they handed out sentences. Amendments in 1996 added new sections including, “all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all offenders, with particular attention to the circumstances of Aboriginal offenders.”
Reilly said it became very clear he did not know anything about Aboriginal people. He set out to change that by visiting reserves and meeting with the chiefs.
In 1997, he heard a domestic abuse case in his courtroom involving a Stoney resident who was taking anger management courses.
Reilly heard the band had withdrawn funds from the program. Reilly ordered an investigation into the financial dealings and political corruption on the reserve.
The then-premier Ralph Klein said only the government has the authority to call an investigation. Reilly was re-assigned to Calgary because the chief judge felt he had lost his objectivity. Reilly appealed and remained in Cochrane until he retired in 2008.
In 2010 Reilly released, Bad Medicine: A Judge’s Struggle for Justice in a First Nations Community, where he recounts his experiences as a criminal court judge and his views on the Canadian justice system.
Reilly said his mission today is to tell non-Aboriginal people about the plight of the Aboriginal people and help them change the way they think about Aboriginal people.
“I think one of the reasons why there are so much over-representation of Aboriginal People in the criminal justice system is that the dominant society has never shown any respect for their laws,” said Reilly. “And so there’s a deliberate lack of respect for ours. And we deserve it until we start showing mutual respect.”
Also speaking on the panel were Tanya Schur, the executive director of the Red Deer Native Friendship Centre, James Frideres, a professor in sociology at the University of Calgary and Denise Lightning, a lawyer whose practice focuses in the area of criminal and child welfare. This was the first of two Anthropology Society symposiums at the college this year.
crhyno@www.reddeeradvocate.com