Circle Process and
Race/ism
By Sayra Pinto
Circle process is a millennial practice of governance. It is millennial. Our ideas of race and the system of racism at most date back to 500 years. So there are two orientations around the relationship between race/ism and circle practice, that in my opinion, are misguided. The first, is that circle can fix racism. This is an opinion that has been favored by White practitioners who have been among the folks who have shaped the restorative justice field. The irony is that a practice introduced to the Western justice system out of a desperate attempt to get it to stop harming indigenous communities in the Yukon, has been stripped of its intense and meaningful challenge to White supremacy by largely White restorative justice practitioners.
Their appropriation of this process is the underpinning of the way circles are taught and practiced today in the United States and Canada and also in Europe, Brazil and other places that closely align with Western ideas of justice. This appropriation has erased indigenous and Black critiques of White supremacy and its use as an attempt to lessen the harm the criminal justice system visits upon our communities. This erasure elicits a reaction from mostly highly educated and upwardly mobile Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOCs) who then want to “reclaim” it. And a whole new system of critique and resistance is now emerging in places like Oakland, New York, Boston and others that seek to “take circles back”. This is the second orientation.
Black, Indigenous and people of color
The irony there is that among many of the BIPOCs at the helm of the “take circles back” stance are not indigenous. Most are staff members and leaders within institutions that are trying on restorative justice and have been largely educated in Western values and ethics and have learned circle process as a tool. Embedded in their critique is a deep grief over what they and their families have given up in the process of becoming acceptable members of their institutional settings. Many claim indigenous heritage despite having no tribal affiliations. Many claim to represent the oppressed despite having lives of privilege. The madness here is that sometimes that grief and cry of outrage is used as a way to get control over the leadership and resources associated with circles.
In the end, at the end of that cry, is a demand for power by folks who feel they are dispossessed. Circles are not a tool that can remedy dispossession or displacement. Quite the contrary, circles are enactments of love and generosity, not power and control, no matter how justified our need for power and control is. But guess who is not in the room when all these power moves are being made? Or in the circle? Or at the table? Former prisoners, domestic violence survivors, students who struggle, indigenous people… regular working class people who have been destroyed by this capitalist White supremacist system. That’s who is not at the table. And in the end, the circle does not belong to anyone.
It belongs to all of us. It belongs to all of us like the Moon belongs to all of us, like the Earth belongs to all of us. Like the air we breathe is shared by all of us. Like the water that averages to be a similar percentage in all of us. This is because circles are a creation of our species, not a race, not a place, not a time. The process of circles begins over a fire under the moonlight, when we could do nothing but huddle for protection, warmth, and intimacy together for eons. They emerge from that vulnerability and interdependence, from the enactment of love and humility in a reality faced by millennia that demanded our deep connection to each other and the world around us for us to live well.
I understand being infuriated by the appropriation and erasure of indigenous and Black peoples from the “official story” presented by the restorative justice sector. It is a violent story in its silence about the desperation that led a people to share its most precious gift with a violent system of justice in the Yukon. So violent that its violence is normalized under niceties, formalities, and good intentions. It is protected by a system that tears families apart and destroys our beautiful children and provides steady employment to largely White communities: spiritual and psychological cannibalism.
The violence of silence and erasure is real and it destroys the erased and silenced unless they get a hold of their personal power and reclaim their voices. This was the original intention, that we stand up and reclaim our power, remember our humanity, remember who we are. This is the original invitation that was issued to all humans, not just some. The power we reclaim belongs to all of us, not just some of us. The process itself is for all of humanity, not just some humans. We do not need certifications to acknowledge our capacity to be humans together.
I have been transformed by the generosity of those who would protect this process for so long and then give it away as a gift for our futures. I have been transformed into forgiveness by the folks who are willing to sit in the discomfort of Whiteness and still show up with full open hearts to circle, who use their power wisely to lift up others, and who generously share of themselves to support everyone. I have been uplifted by the ways in which Black folks celebrate and lift each other up in the eyes of Creator when there is an opportunity to see each other in circle. I have been held and loved at times of deep personal grief by comadres and compadres, compañeras in the struggle in both Spanish and English. I have let tears of grief for what has been done to us in the name of progress at the feet of elders and mothers and young ones who busily work to protect their tribal communities.
I can tell you that no matter what the walk of life, or made up race, each of those communities are, we all hunger for a different way to be, act, grieve, lead, celebrate, together. We have the power to decide who we roll with. I choose to roll with the mighty of heart, no matter their race, against White supremacy and prejudice that eats away at America. I believe the future of these lands will be shaped by the mighty of heart. The ones that create light in the dark and who remember the basic lesson that has shaped humanity: we need each other to live well.
Circle process, like a deep well of cool water in the heat of day, is an experience of humanity that we all know deep inside. We need good circle practice, not a practice of circle that is about control and ownership. Circle is not a place to hide from the complexity we live in, but rather a practice through which we are presented with the opportunity to embrace that complexity without compromising who we are.
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