Coconino County to launch Navajo-inspired peacemaking program for some low-level crimes

LAUREN GILGER: Starting in January, certain people charged with low-level, nonviolent crimes in Coconino County can choose a different path: a peacemaking program.

It’s a tradition in Navajo culture that the Navajo Nation’s Judicial Branch has been offering to offenders since 1982. And now, in a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the Navajo Nation and the Coconino County Attorney’s Office, it will be available to Native and non-Native folks alike.

The peacemaking diversion program will function as an alternative to prosecution in select cases, and our next guest this morning says she’s seen it change lives.

It won’t only be for Navajo people, though a disproportionate number of them end up in the county’s jails. Coconino County is about 26% Indigenous; the jail population is about 50% Indigenous.

Rosiene Charley is bi-cultural training manager for the Navajo Nation’s Peacemaking Program, though she began as a detention officer at the sheriff’s office there. I spoke with her more about the program, but first she asked if she could formally introduce herself in Navajo, as is tradition.

ROSIENE CHARLEY: [Speaking in Diné.] First. This is Roseanne Charley. Modern writing, Bashishchiin Tachishchiin, Native Tabąąhá dashicheii, from Tódích’íi’nii éí dashinalí.

LAUREN GILGER: Tell me what you said there.

ROSIENE CHARLEY: I said my name’s Rosiene Charley, and my clans are One Who Walks Around You. I’m born for the Red House clan, and my maternal grandparents are of the Zuni Edgewater, and my paternal grandparents are of the Bitter Water People.

LAUREN GILGER: That introduction, she said, is essential in Navajo culture because who you are and who you’re related to can translate into accountability in their clan system. Charley told me there’s no word in Navajo for “I’m sorry.” Instead, there’s a three-part process.

ROSIENE CHARLEY: The first one is k’é náhásdlį́į́’, which means that harmony was restored, that that kinship has been restored, maybe through a handshake or maybe just through acknowledging the agreement that was made by the family.

The second part is k’é násdlį́į́’, which means that you reestablish yourself and you continue to contribute to your roles and your responsibilities.

And then with the k’é dóó’né’ part of it, it’s like a long-term journey to realign their ethics and to rebuild their reputation, maybe within their family or within their community. Whatever wrong that was done could then become a teaching tool that they will, you know, stand by for the rest of their life, teaching younger generations and things like that to say, “These are the do’s and don’ts.”

LAUREN GILGER: It’s so interesting to me that it’s always, it seems, community-based, whether it’s with your family and the other participant’s family, or the broader community beyond that. Like is that, is that a part of Diné culture?

ROSIENE CHARLEY: Yes, it is, because we do have this clan system, and that’s very important. You know, that was why I was saying, “Is it OK if I can introduce myself in the Diné language to let people know who I am so they can say, ‘This is how I relate to this person.’”

But that’s a huge component is the k’é part of it, the clan system. When you go out there and you introduce yourself, most definitely you will be related to a group of people or maybe even every individual. So you can never say in Navajo culture that “I am nobody’s business,” because you are pretty much everybody’s business, as you are related to everybody.

LAUREN GILGER: Well, and it sounds like your community, your family, who you’re related to and how, has so much to do with how you would define your own identity in this culture.

ROSIENE CHARLEY: Yes.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So let’s talk then about taking this idea of an official kind of judicial peacemaking process for someone who commits a crime and collaborating now with an outside not-Navajo entity, right? You’re collaborating with the Coconino County Attorney’s Office to apply this practice for them, for folks who are not necessarily Navajo, although I’m sure many people who go through this program will be. How will that work?

ROSIENE CHARLEY: I think it’s going to be interesting. A lot of the teachings will have to be shared like from a very basic, beginner type of teaching. A lot of the Indigenous people that are living in the county, like in Flagstaff, they probably might have heard the teachings or they might not have heard the teachings. So we have to start at a very basic level with them.

And way back when, maybe 40-50 years ago, traditional teachings that we share here within peacemaking was shared at Grandma and Grandpa’s fireplace or at Mom and Dad’s fireplace, but that has changed a lot.

LAUREN GILGER: So this is not for everyone, right? This is not for people who commit violent crimes. And I wonder what your goal in that is in terms of the problem that Coconino County sees in terms of people going in and out of the system; 50%, in fact, of the jail population in Coconino County is Indigenous. How do you think a program like this might help address that problem?

ROSIENE CHARLEY: So people who go through the revolving doors, so to speak, it could be on an individual base where we talk about self-identity and a lot of these traditional teachings to try to lead them back to maybe a time where they were raised, you know, at Grandma and Grandpa’s home or their parents’ home and say, “Hey, I remember those teachings.” And then go back to those teachings and grasp it so that they don’t go through the revolving doors anymore, and maybe they can remember where home is and to make that peace within themselves to heal from whatever traumas that they have and to be able to leave, you know, the social ills behind and go back onto the corn pollen path is our hopes and our goals in implementing this with the county.

LAUREN GILGER: So I know the program with Coconino County isn’t really underway yet, but what does it look like when this happens for someone in your program at the Navajo Judicial Branch? What’s the result? Do folks come out of this changed people?

ROSIENE CHARLEY: We have had repeated offenders come through our doors, you know, multiple times. But we have always been told, you know, through the traditional teaching, that we should always see them as a brand new case and not as a repeat offender. And then sometimes, yes, it does work to where it’s just a one-time thing, and they go through the program, and then they restart their life and things fall into place for them.

LAUREN GILGER: How much of this has to do with substance abuse and getting treatment for that? Is that a part of these plans?

ROSIENE CHARLEY: A lot of it has to do with substance abuse, whether it’s alcoholism or street drugs and things like that. And usually, on the order, it will say, you know, to talk to them about, you know, the substance abuse part of it. And then there might be an additional check-off box that says that this person will go to mental health or Department of Behavioral Mental Health Services for maybe an alcohol assessment or a drug assessment to receive services. So, you know, they all go back in together, and they all correlate in one way or another, and they work together to try to help this person out.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So what does this do then, Rosiene, for the victims of crimes? Like they’re part of this process, right?

ROSIENE CHARLEY: Mhm. So it is interesting. Within the Navajo Nation Judicial Branch, let’s say, for example, domestic violence is one of the main things that we get referrals for as well from the courts on Navajo.

We do have a high rate of cases that are related to domestic violence. When somebody is seeking a petition for a temporary protection order or a domestic protection order, they are given that option when they’re filling out the application: Is this something that you want to go through peacemaking for?

So when they do come through here, and when they get assigned to me as maybe as a traditional program specialist, I usually educate them on what domestic violence is, what triggers it. And I believe that education is a huge thing.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, we’ll leave it there for now. Rosiene Charley, bi-cultural training manager for the Peacemaking Program with the Navajo Nation Judicial Branch, helping to oversee this new collaboration with Coconino County. Rosiene, thank you so much for coming on The Show. Thanks for explaining this to us. I appreciate it very much.

ROSIENE CHARLEY: Thank you.