Peacebuilding

Righting Unrightable Wrongs

What are Unrightable Wrongs?
Systematically inflicted on an identity group; have historic, present, and future, impacts for parties and community (other elements of the definition)

John Paul Lederach: a multiplicity of roles is needed to encourage conflict to move constructively. Sometimes we need to deepen conflict, sometimes to stop it. If we can’t find a negotiated settlement when imbedded in a past that can't be changed:
- we have gift to remember, but not to change, the past. We can imagine future, but not control it. We live between these paradoxes.
- There are 3 roles in this context
- accompaniment, a concept that appears almost everywhere but in the United States. The word accompaniment comes from the Latin, “to break bread." Accompaniment of the process is a way to move forward that connects the wronged with the others.
- alongsideness: with communities that have lost a voice, the process has taken away their voice. That requires alongsideness, and finding ways to bring voice and bring the voiceless close enough to be heard
- to be with beneficiaries of what went wrong, and get them to raise it onto the agendas and develop a level of trust that permits things to be spoken to people who see how they have the capacity to become engaged.

Michelle Armster:
We must find ways to understand reconciliation not as “forgive and forget,” but “remember and change.” Thus, we must bring our best imagination to the past. Usually, the tendency is just to move beyond the past as fast as poss. Many groups are frustrated by small amount of imagination we bring to the past. An African Kenyan maxim: is that the past lies before us. We are traveling toward our ancestors to what has gone before. We don't know what is behind us. We don't understand that when we move too fast to resolve deep problems, we only re-seed the problems. Thus is the past is alive, the ancestors are with us. The question is how to build a reconciliation that remembers and changes.

Another concern these days is how fast anyone who disagrees with the United States is deemed “a terrorist.” It took all of our yesterdays to bring us (the United States) to this point, to this point of view. A government that does this must have perpetuated so many other wrongs. We must be willing to say "we can no longer have this happen." Many identities require many roles. We must reclaim or repent or bring back the soul that has been lost in the work that we do, lost what it means to be people connected.

One panelist described the experience she had, having invited a friend to join in an Arab-American-Israeli-Jewish dialogue. In the course of the dialogue, her friends asked the other participants to give her back her childhood. There was silence and discomfort. Others felt called to speak of their responsibility. “It was hard to see what we do and the impact of it.” There is a certain lack of clarity between the personal and professional aspects of conflict resolution. How do we articulate our values, esp when practitioners are not invited to the table? One approach is to ask people, “What is important to you, and what you are most proud of?"

Our challenge is to realize that emotion and affect are hard to allow for. As conflict resolvers, we have to deal with tramua, insecurity and fear. Concerning the role of role of advocacy: people are tired of label of "neutrality", especially those working in the middle of large conflicts. Those working on systematic change find neutrality hard. If you are doing advocacy, you don't want to do harm. In order to be an effective neutral party, you need others to observe you in your work as a neutral, to help you see when you are not playing a neutral role; we must recognize our blind spots.

From Kalani Souza – Matt – of Hawaii: Be inclusive, not exclusive. “When I was eight years old, I wanted to know where God is. My father took me out for a walk. ‘Where the water meets the land meets the air, that's where God is.’ That's why you want to walk along the shore when you talk to God. It's always the same, and always changing.”

“The work we do is driven by spirit,” he said. Of that magical moment, that turning point in a mediation when the parties decide they want to understand each other, they want to reach and agreement, he said “You can’t tell me spirit isn’t there.” The room agreed. “Hawaiians look seven generations forward and seven generations back when they consider a decision. If you rush to a decision without thinking, you create unrightable wrongs. Cultural belief in the past is important not to forget. The past must have a voice. It just shouldn't have a vote. It needs to inform, but not control, where we're going. “

“How should we be involved in unrightable wrongs?” asked a non-aboriginal Hawaiian. She proposed:

- as advocates of conscious process. In Hawaii, the most vocal advocates are the angry Hawaiians. I’m not sure how practically they can consider the needs of those who have benefitted. When I consider those unrightable wrongs, I felt helpless, so ashamed. I wanted to do something to feel constructive. What if I just cleaned up my own act? A silent frightened majority can speak up. We need to find the opportunity to walk our talk with these unresolved issues.

- as midwives to the process (of reconciliation) so we can say we did the best we could, and by expanding our minds about what the process is. It might include or borrow from models of mediation like: interest-based; transformative; restorative; reconciliation; social justice; structural dialogue; litigation; settlement; arbitration; public awareness and action campaigns; formal apologies; prayer; native practices of healing; civil disobedience; listening projects; restorative art. All of these things can create momentum.

- Don't wait to be invited. What are the limits on the boundaries we set, who can be allies? What is the sense of time and scale? Jump in, experiment, invent, and lift despair.

Closing challenges offered by the panelists: If not us who, if us, how? We stand for inclusion under compassion; aloha, will you stand with us? What is the role of values in your practice? How does the field of conflict resolution contribute to oppression and how can we be active against oppression? When will we recover our prophetic voice? What is your relationship with unrightable wrongs? And what would you like it to be?