The Navajo Nation's Peacemaker Division: An Integrated, Community-Based Dispute Resolution Forum

Abstract

For hundreds of years, the Dine" or Navajo people, have used a community-based dispute resolution ceremony to resolve conflicts. 1 The ceremony integrates the wisdom, skills and perspectives of a variety of participants in order to reach noncoercive settlements that return the disputants and the community at large to a state of harmony. Because the contemporary Navajo Peacemaker Division relies on a customary dispute resolution method, experts argue that the Division is better considered a forum for "traditional" dispute resolution than "alternative" dispute resolution. 2 Although the Navajo Nation Judicial Branch includes a well-developed court system based on the Anglo-American model, Navajo judges, legislators and citizens assert that traditional dispute resolution mechanisms more fully comport with Navajo customs and thus are more effective in resolving the conflicts that arise among Navajo people and within the Navajo Nation. 3

The Community Story, Relationality and Process: Bridging Tools for Researching Local Knowledge in a Peri‐urban Township

“…Alternatively, indigenous conflict transformation models emphasise interconnectedness, process and relationships, holistic experience, emotional and spiritual knowing and an expanded time conceptualization (Walker, ). For example, justice ceremonies are avenues for dispute resolution among the Navajo people (Brown, ). Issues are addressed under the respected guidance of a community figure ( naat'aanii or peacemaker); the emphasis is on peacemaking to restore hozo (harmony) of the community over alienation/punishment.…”

“…Connected to storytelling (orality) and relationality in indigenous knowledges is the value of process (Brown, ; Walker, ). Process as an epistemology reflects a holistic worldview and is prioritised over fixed essences; thus, of import is what happens in the flow or intertwining spaces between humans (or between humans and the physical world).…”