Re-Framing Redress: A 'Social Healing Through Justice' Approach to United States-Native Hawaiian and Japan-Ainu Reconciliation Initiatives

Abstract

This Article refines a developing Social Healing Through Justice framework for both guiding and critiquing ongoing reconciliation or reparations initiatives in established democracies committed to civil and human rights. It does this at a conceptual level by coalescing multidisciplinary insights into social healing. It also draws upon American and global redress initiatives and integrates into the framework evolving human rights principles to deepen the dimensions of reparatory justice for systemic harms -- the psychological, economic, cultural, and institutional. At a strategic level, it explores how Social Healing Through Justice at times shapes a country's redress efforts -- in light of concerns about its democratic legitimacy.

The Social Healing Through Justice analysis of the United States-Native Hawaiian (domestic) and Japan-Ainu (international) initiatives sheds light on redress efforts in four ways. First, it highlights the inadequacy of governmental efforts to repair long-term systemic damage when those efforts focus mainly on 'compensation', without attention to the psychological, cultural, and institutional aspects of reparatory justice. Second, it reveals the salutary potential of social healing efforts as well as the emptiness of insincere apologies and unfulfilled promises of repair. Third, it offers strategic insight into how a country's geopolitical concerns about perceived legitimacy as a democracy committed to civil and human rights influence the country's future reparatory actions. And finally, it underscores the need for the continuing development of a workable framework for guiding and assessing redress initiatives.

Keywords: Social Healing Through Justice, reparations, reconciliation, redress, apology, Civil Liberties Act of 1988, Japanese American internment, World War II, democratic legitimacy, 4Rs, recognition, responsibility, reconstruction, international human rights, reparative justice