VALUES & BELIEFS
When you engage with restorative justice, you engage with a new set of beliefs.
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Knowing and understanding the core framework upon which RFNL is built is essential for creating and nurturing a culture of restorative justice.
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Consider each of the statements on the image below as they apply to individuals you interact with day-to-day. Know that every person's true self is worthy. Know that all humans deeply desire being in good relationships. Recognize how we all have gifts and that every one of us is needed for the individual strengths we bring to the world.​​
Ask yourself:
Which have you always known?
Do you agree with all elements of this framework?
When you engage with restorative justice, you engage with shared values.​​​
​​​​​​​​In order to be truly relational, we must establish a common understanding of the things that we value as a community. By truthfully identifying our shared values we have the opportunity to be open and honest in relationship. When we understand our shared values, community expectations become clear and we can start working toward being truly relational. We must work to recognize those things that have always helped us connect with each other so that we might begin to identify values that we can share as a relational society.​​​​
Ask yourself:
What do I value most about my favourite person?
What qualities do I appreciate in a co-worker?
Who was my favourite teacher and what was the best thing about them?
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Indigenous Wholistic Framework
At RFNL we continually try to grow our understanding of relationship. We are always trying to further understand how we know each other through each other.​
(Source: Pidgeon, M. (2016). More than a checklist: Meaningful Indigenous inclusion in higher education. Social Inclusion,
4(1), 77–91.)
In this time in history, it is helpful to reflect on Michelle Pidgeon's Indigenous Wholistic Framework. Pidgeon (2016) says that this diagram "represents for me, as a person of Mi'kmaq ancestry a way of centering who I am... This Framework connects not only the philosophical underpinnings of Indigenous knowledges but attempts pictorially to represent the complexity of wholistic interconnections that we have as individuals, to our communities, nations, and global communities" (p. 80).
In all aspects of society, Restorative Justice requires that we focus on relationships before rules and behaviour, on people before policies, on honouring before measuring, and on well-being before success. RFNL focuses first on education, recognizing that the work done in educational institutions/organizations can serve as a model for all others. This occurs through a stance where educators turn from judgement to a sense of wonder and curiosity allowing education to be proactive, rather than reactive, with pedagogy that is consistently rooted in respect, concern, and dignity through relationships. We strive to ensure that these things permeate every aspect of society so that they do not become siloed, and we can nurture relationality.​