Congratulations to OLWS Board Officer Edward Valandra, editor of Colorizing Restorative Justice: Voicing our Realities, for being selected as a 2021 Independent Book Publishers Association’s 33rd annual Benjamin Franklin Award finalist in the Multicultural category.

Gold winners will be announced during virtual watch parties in May.

The twenty authors of color in this book raise unsettling issues about restorative justice and restorative practices (RJ/RP), situated as they are in white supremacist settler societies that sustain deep roots in European invasion and colonizing. The contradiction between restorative practices and the Western, white supremacist, settler societies in which we practice them is inherent. We People of Color and Indigenous Peoples have not created the contradiction. It is there. But we collectively experience this contradiction in ways Whites do not. We feel an urgency about addressing this contradiction that our White settler colleagues seem not to perceive or express. We also feel an urgency about critically informing communities of color and Indigenous communities that this contradiction, while not of our making or choosing, is one we negotiate in restorative justice. -From the introduction, by Edward C. Valandra

Valandra’s book, “Not Without Our Consent: Lakota Resistance to Termination, 1950-59” was also chosen for the 2020 #NativeReads program as an essential reading from the Oceti Sakowin Oyate.

Image of book cover for Colorizing Restorative Justice with a tanned hide with American Indian artwork. Photo courtesy of Living Justice Press.