In Fall 2025, as part of HRSJ 5020 Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Resurgence of Land-Based Pedagogies and Practices, my perception of social justice has changed radically as I’ve come to see it not merely as individual fairness but as a complex interconnected system of social transformation. My understanding of social justice was to provide equal service and rights to people and protect the rights of each individual before the law; however, my college education has helped me realize how inequality has been perpetuated over the years through historical, political, and societal forces beyond my imagination.
The topic of decolonizing justice using Indigenous legal systems was the norm in my research paper, and it worked as a catalyst in this development. Writing about restorative practices such as sentencing circles and urban Indigenous courts made me realize that social justice is not only a question of repairing the ills that afflict our systems, but also of whether our systems even are just at all. During my research into Indigenous approaches to justice as based on healing of the community as individuals and reintegration into community relationships through community cooperation as opposed to retribution, I have been able to recognize that legal systems in the West work to maintain the same disparities they seek to extinguish. This research showed that social justice cannot be true unless we consider not only which laws are present but also what knowledge bases and worldviews those laws enshrine. Plow through legal pluralism and Indigenous self-governance as I do in my paper, and you will be forced to contend with uncomfortable facts about the ongoing legacy of colonialism. I learned that social justice work is not simply reacting to emergencies at hand it entails a comprehension of how long-gone injustices, such as those of residential schools, may continue to perpetuate modern injustices and how solutions may represent a much broader response to the cause of an issue, rather than a mere remedy to the symptom. The idea of restorative licensing that I examined demonstrated to me how justice is related to economic systems and the protection of cultures. The most striking thing I learned in the course of this research was the obstacles to the practice of Indigenous justice, namely, insufficient funding, institutional systems of racism within Canadian institutions, and intergovernmental jurisdiction disagreements between and among government levels.
It became apparent to me that social justice work often entails the fight against institutional systems of opposition to change, even when a demonstrative change can be shown to be more effective in healing communities and/or reducing reoffending. I was exposed to the notion that social justice work is more than the changing of a policy but the shift in the entire perception of what constitutes knowledge, power, and the concept of community accountability. The paper helped me understand that purposeful work on social justice needs to place the voices and leadership of the people who are directly affected by injustice, instead of forcing solutions.
The experience of studying this topic has transformed my thoughts about social justice, where both intellectual activism and humility are required. It is not just the study of theories of justice that is necessary but the readiness to interrogate our own bases and to learn by studying knowledge systems with which we may not have been comfortable. Developing a long-term view of transformation rather than implementing forgettable fixation. Social justice, however, to me now is about the creation of systems of dignity, rest, and true responsibility, and to do that, we cannot remain in the confines of our safe academic discussions and within our own heads! Here is the paper: