(Mohawk)—understandings of law, healing, and justice to contribute to debates on criminal justice reform and abolition. Drawing on Kanien’kehà:ka politico-legal traditions, including the Great Law of Peace and the concept of the Good Mind, it offers a relational and community-based perspective on responding to harm.
Centring Indigenous self-determination is critical to abolitionist discourse. Abolitionist work must meaningfully engage Indigenous conceptions of justice and the right to administer Indigenous justice systems and legal orders. Within Haudenosaunee thought, the Good Mind is a relational and process-oriented political concept—both a state of being and a guide for relating to others in a good way. Justice is understood as an ongoing communal practice aimed at restoring balance rather than imposing punishment.
Contemporary Indigenous community justice programs embody these principles through culturally grounded approaches to accountability, rehabilitation, and wellness. These initiatives offer insight into what justice can look like when Indigenous self-determination is respected and affirmed. In dialogue with interdisciplinary scholarship on justice and community wellbeing, this article argues that Indigenous law and justice represent a vital and necessary contribution to abolitionist imaginaries and to the creation of non-carceral, life-affirming futures.