Inside the former Carnegie Library building in Victoria, Indigenous artwork of aquatic plants clings to the colonial structure’s barrel-vault entrance. The art extends throughout the building, showing springs of cedar or swirling salmon infused into panes of glass that make up office walls.
The centre offers culturally grounded, trauma-informed legal support and other outreach services for First Nation, Metis or Inuit people having to navigate criminal or child and family court matters. Despite having a wide-ranging mandate, the centre aims do two main things: reform a legal system designed to harm, control and hold back B.C.’s Indigenous people, and restore Indigenous legal orders and traditions.
The Victoria centre takes a holistic view as it recognizes several challenges may be contributing to why an individual had to walk through its doors. Aside from it’s eight staff lawyers, the site also includes outreach workers who can connect clients to mental health, addictions treatment or housing supports.
Reducing negative criminal justice outcomes that disproportionately affect Indigenous people is key to the justice centres’ mission. “While you might of had a defense to the original charge, now you are guilty of breaching the court order,” the clinial legal supervisor said at the Victoria centre. “Once you get in the court process, the promises you make to the court are now the heaviest in gravity, and those can continue and are harder to defend.”
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