>Hi Jim!
>
>>By the way, native Canadians are more and more having administration of law, and especially the penalties, moved into their own jurisdiction with their own "style" applied. But the intent is still that the same laws are in effect country-wide.
>
>Forgive my poor english, but could you, please, rephrase this paragraph, for me to understand it?

I'll try < s >.

"Native Canadians" are the original pre-Columbus inhabitants of Canada, formerly called '(red) Indians'. The majority of these people were put on what we call "reservations" and they also were put through (over many years) various efforts to assimilate them and also subject to laws, rules and regulations that are (were) demeaning and demoralizing and outlawed many of their long-standing practises. The latter somewhat like outlawing a whole group's "religion".

In more recent (20 years or less) history efforts have been made, especially on the punishment side of things, but moving slowly too to the judgement side too, to let the Native Canadians design and enforce their own methods for handling offenders.
Some examples I've heard of are:
- Apologizing to the Elders and the offended party and working to redress the wrong.
- Having the community work with the offender to avert drunkeness or severely interfere with malicious/violent drunken behaviour.
- Being sentenced to be in the wilderness for many days without human contact to think things over and then come back and discuss with Elders.

Obviously I'm over-simplifying here because I don't know the details. But one main theme is that jail has proven to do nothing to stop the bad stuff and these measures have better success.

cheers

>
>Thanks,
>
>Fernando