CASE STUDIES
Restorative Justice
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Author of case study: Greg Labrosse
Geopolitical location of space:
1409 1st Avenue East
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan
Extant?
Yes
Architect:
Original architect unknown
Friendship Centres have been active in Saskatchewan since 1963 and since then the movement has grown within Saskatchewan to encompass 11 Friendship Centres that are part of the 125 member National Association of Friendship Centres.
A Friendship Centre is a not-for-profit urban and rural Indigenous service delivery infrastructure that provides cultural-based Indigenous programs and services to an Indigenous population.
Friendship Centres offer programming in education and training, employment opportunities and counselling, health programs, children and youth programs, recreation programs and economic development. They also offer language training, skills development, computer training, work-site placements, nutrition programs, healing circles, alcohol and drug counselling, summer and winter camps, day care centres, youth peer counselling, youth drop-in centres, organised sports and leagues, wilderness training and facility rentals.
Yes. The service staff at the Prince Albert Indian and Métis Friendship Centre (PAIMFC) act as a liaison between offenders and the court, and offers a variety of holistic programs, such as Bringing Back Our Warriors, for men, which addresses violence, anger management, and domestic abuse, traditional counselling; and learning activities, such as the Kairos blanket exercise about Indigenous experience in Canada. The centre also hosts support circles, a weekly addictions day program, works with families of missing and murdered Indigenous people, and with survivors of the residential school system.
The spaces where restorative justice takes place within the Centre have not been designed specifically for safe listening. They are multi-purpose rooms that are adapted according to the need.
Although the Centre’s focus is on delivering services to the Indigenous community, it operates under a status-blind policy, which means anyone regardless of Indigenous status can make use of their services and programs.
The Centre is housed in a three-storey concrete building in the heart of downtown Prince Albert. The Centre acquired and now owns the actual building from where it provides its services. It is responsible for the majority of its operating and maintenance costs (including power, utilities, and municipal taxes). It receives annual program funding from the Federal Government and the Provincial Government for the delivery of specific programs, initiatives, and services.
The Centre has to fundraise in order to cover any costs that are not part of their initial core funding allowance. The fundraising, then enables them to provide additional services important to the community, such as healing circles, Pow-Wows, and blanket exercises.
The Centre has an Indigenous Elder who is part of the staff. The Elder serves to guide and mentor recently released inmates to help them re-acquaint themselves with traditional knowledge and culture, traditional healing, and to reconnect with their ancestral roots. The Elder also serves as a role model that can relate to the former inmates and can evaluate if the recipients of his guidance and mentorship are in fact ready to receive assistance and support.
The Centre is bound by the constraints of the funding programs that provide it with annual allocations, covering very specific expenses (not including janitorial services, renovations, or improvements). Likewise, because the Centre is a not-for-profit organisation, it has had to mobilise its own facility to deliver its services.
Additionally, as in the case of most NGOs, the provincial and federal government does not usually provide direct funding for the acquisition or restoration of the actual spaces in which NGOs deliver their programs.
is an author, speaker, columnist, and podcaster in the fields of architecture and decorative arts. She is completing her MA in Art History at Concordia University, Montréal, and holds a Bachelor of Commerce with a major in Marketing from John Molson School of Business. She studied Industrial Psychology in Los Angeles, California. Sicotte is the author of two published books on design (2015, 2018) published by Les Éditions Cardinal.
is a Colombian PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at Concordia University. She has a background in architectural design and community activism and holds a master’s degree in Building and Urban Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, England. Her interests focus on socially-engaged art, social movements, collaborative activism in post-conflict scenarios, collectively-produced art, and art produced in relation to the built environment.
is a PhD candidate in Humanities at Concordia University. His research focuses on spatial agency, social aesthetics, youth narratives, and graphic representations of urban memory. He has published on the relationship between children, play, and public space in Cartagena, Colombia. He has also worked as an editor on literary projects, including Territorio Fértil, which received the María Nelly Murillo Hinestroza award for Afro-Colombian literature.
is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Architectures of Spatial Justice (Tier 2) at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada. Her research interests include low-income housing and participatory design, civil protest and urban design, and campus landscapes and race. Her publications include the co-edited book, Orienting Istanbul (2010) and solo-authored book, Istanbul Open City (2018).
is an artist and a professor of Art History at Concordia University. Her work focuses on women and the history of the built environment, urban landscapes, research-creation, and oral history. She has published on the spatial history of the suffrage movement, public art, gardens, and the politics of urban change. In addition to her research on the spaces of restorative and transitional justice, she is leading an oral history project on the urban memories of diverse Montrealers.
is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at Concordia University, Montreal (Quebec, Canada). He is also the second co-director of Concordia’s Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. His latest publications explore listening in the context of post-conflict performances of memory. For instance, see ‘Facilitating voicing and listening in the context of post-conflict performances of memory. The Colombian scenario.’ In: De Nardi, S., Orange, H., et al. Routledge Handbook of Memoryscapes. Routledge: London. (2019), and his article ‘Not being able to speak is torture: performing listening to painful narratives’. International Journal of Transitional Justice, Special Issue Creative Approaches to Transitional Justice: Contributions of Arts and Culture. (March, 2020)
