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"Creating a Framework for the Wisdom of the Community:" Review of Victim Services in Nunavut, Northwest and Yukon Territories
Previous Page | Table of Content | Next Page 4.2 Culture and Social Norms: Background InformationThe exploration of how victims of crime were, and are, dealt with by their families, communities and society, in this case in the Yukon, may be assisted by the following explanation about the cultural basis of social norms. Social norms around the treatment of victimized people, and around all facets of personal and collective behaviour, do not develop in a vacuum. There are a wide variety of economic and socio-political, and some would argue evolutionary, explanations for the social norms in all cultures. The following anthropological explanation of social norms provides a useful framework for understanding why victims in each culture are treated as they are. Land-based indigenous cultures around the world, including the First Nations culture in the Yukon, share a worldview that has been referred to as “high context” by some anthropologists.[133] High context cultures are those cultures in which the total context of a situation is observed, analyzed and understood instinctively by all members of the group, often at the same time. Information is gathered and understood within the context in which it occurs. That context includes the movement of animals, the weather, the behaviour of people, celestial events, in short, all activities and events occurring both in the present, the past and the future. This is the reason they are called “high” context, that is, a great deal of contextual information is gathered, on a sensual level, in order to reach conclusions. Events can only be understood in the context of their relationship to other events. In contrast, “low context” cultures are those cultures in which information is gathered, broken down and understood in separate segments. In low context cultures individuals acquire information through largely technological, non-holistic methods. That is, they rely heavily on the spoken and written word, and on technological tools such as telephones, clocks and radios. In these cultures, for example, the behaviour of animals and people are not often taken into consideration when coming to conclusions about the weather. The weather is seen as a separate phenomenon from the actions of animals and humans. In short, low context cultures rely on what is called deductive reasoning, systemic analysis and the “scientific method” to understand life. They rely much less on the overall context of events. High context cultures do not understand time as linear but see it as cyclical and inherent in objects and beings. They do not see any element of the universe as separate for any other element, including living beings. Nothing is separate, all of life is one entity, one phenomenon. They understand their place as part of this whole, not dominating or dictating events, but living in some sort of harmonious balance with events. At the opposite end of the spectrum, low context cultures see time as marching from the past through the present and into the future. The universe is seen as a collection of discreet beings, events and circumstances that may or may not be related. And, they understand their role as one of controlling these beings, events and circumstances, not particularly blending with them. All cultures fall somewhere within this spectrum, from high to low context. The cultures that colonized northern Canada were, and are, fairly low context. The indigenous cultures in northern Canada were, and are, fairly high context. When a low context culture overtakes a high context culture, as happened in much of the world during the 1700s and 1800s when Europe was empire building, there are many generations, and many hundreds of years, of upheaval, confusion and crisis for the high context culture. First of all, and from the outset, the indigenous high context culture is often judged negatively by the dominant culture. The worldview described above, and the resulting value high context cultures place on relationships, non-interference, sharing, conservation, emotional restraint, suppression of anger (among many other values which were important to survival in a land-based, subsistence culture),[134] comes into direct conflict with low context values around personal success and ambition, individualism and competitiveness. This clash of fundamental worldviews and ethics for behaviour has created enormous trauma in the high context, First Nations cultures in the Yukon and northern Canada. To make matters worse, the grief and confusion from this loss of identity and collective integrity has been further intensified by residential school abuse, relocation of families into settled communities and the forceful integration of a regional subsistence-based population into a global capitalist economy. One of the results has been the relatively high levels of trauma, addictions, violence and victimization within the First Nations population over the last several generations. To complicate matters, its not completely clear how these phenomena, when they occurred, were dealt with prior to this lengthy period of colonization and assimilation. For example, there are varying accounts of how women and children were treated in pre-colonial times. And, there are differing descriptions of how violence was defined and dealt with. However, an understanding of the social norms in both high and low context cultures is a useful tool in understanding why cultures behave as they do. 4.3 Services Available in Yukon Communities4.3.1 Scope and MethodologyAt the outset of the research process, a decision was made by the parties sponsoring and undertaking the research to review only the main victim service providers in the Yukon Territory. This decision reflects the existence of a relatively large number of comprehensive, long-term, and universally available, services for victimized people in the territory. In addition, unlike other northern and remote jurisdictions, all Yukon communities but one (Old Crow) are accessible by road, making universal service provision more possible. There are 17 major serviced communities, all administered from Whitehorse. (This is unlike other northern jurisdictions, for example Northwest Territories where 30 communities in 6 separately administered regions, with a limited road system make centralized universal service provision less possible.) These universal services have their headquarters in the capital, Whitehorse, where 74% of the population, 22,879 people, reside.[135] A total of 30 interviews, with respondents from 24 universally available Yukon services, were undertaken for this inventory. These services, all headquartered in Whitehorse, include:
All these services either have offices in some smaller communities or travel to them on a regular basis. They actively seek referrals from the outlying communities. [136] In addition to these universally available services, community-based services, offering specific services to victimized individuals, were also contacted. These community services, based outside the capital Whitehorse, include women’s shelters, community justice programs, and victim healing programs. A total of 12 community-based services were contacted for this inventory. These services include:
Service providers whose mandate includes the entire territory are all based in Whitehorse. These service providers were interviewed in person between May and June 2002. Community-based rural service providers were interviewed by phone during the same time period. Contact numbers, and other pertinent information, were taken from several Yukon directories focused on the provision of social service information. These directories include:
[133] See Edward Hall, Beyond Culture, 1976. Aspects of this worldview, and its potential impact on victim service delivery, can also be found in the Nunavut chapter of this paper. [134] See Brant, Clare C., M.D., A Collection of Chapters, Lectures, Workshops and Thoughts, available from the Native Mental Health Association of Canada, 1996. [135] Total Yukon population is 31,070. Yukon Bureau of Statistics, June 2002. [136] This is not to imply that there are no gaps in service. In fact, many respondents made recommendations that there be greater effort to provide less centralized, more community-based services. See section 4.4, “Recommendations for Victim Services in Yukon Territory.” |
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