Relationships are the foundation of everything society does, including how it views justice, a concept that Jorgina Sunn knows well after becoming caught in a gang lifestyle.
Sunn’s early upbringing was tumultuous. Both of her parents attended residential schools. Sunn’s mother had her brother at age 13 and then her at age 16. After her mother was murdered, Sunn was sent into foster care, where she was physically, emotionally and sexually abused.
She was later adopted, but her new father sexually abused her as well.
Sunn began abusing drugs when she was 16. When she turned 17, she was resentful of all adults and struggled in school since she lacked support, she explained on Nov. 19 during a restorative justice luncheon hosted by the John Howard Society of Saskatchewan — Moose Jaw branch as part of Restorative Justice Week.
Restorative justice emphasizes repairing the harm caused by criminal behaviour. That can be accomplished through co-operative processes where affected stakeholders meet, which can lead to changed relationships, people and communities.
Sunn moved back to Alberta and began abusing crack cocaine, which led her to Calgary and a gang. She also began dating a full-patch gang member.
“You can understand why I joined a gang, because I was needing something and looking for something. I liked the acceptance. I liked the responsibility I had because I was the sergeant at arms, so I got to be tough — and I was good at it,” Sunn said.
Sunn was homeless in Calgary and turned to crime. That ended in 2005 when she sold cocaine to an undercover police officer and was sentenced to two years in a federal penitentiary. At that time she couldn’t relate to people and couldn’t form healthy relationships.
While in prison, someone told Sunn that she could go to a healing lodge due to her ethnicity. She was later transferred to the Prairie Sky Recovery Centre near Leipzig, Sask., where — for the first time ever — she learned about her Aboriginal culture.
“That was my first experience with restorative justice,” she said.
Elders visited every day and treated her as a human being and as family. She pointed out that she then had no relationship with her kids — put into foster care since she was considered an unfit mother — or her adopted parents and was estranged from her other family.
Punishment was the only concept Sunn knew in life. She had never heard about consequences or what that meant. After leaving prison, she met a judge and former lieutenant-governor of British Columbia who was big into restorative justice. He had done much work on reserves in northern B.C. and helped turn around the lives of youths.
Those meetings with the judge had an effect on Sunn’s life.
“I tried to sober up many times in my life,” she continued. However, her main goal was less to become healthy and more to satisfy a court demand, to get her kids back, or for family. She didn’t understand what it meant to be well.
Sunn met Father Andre, the founder of Saskatoon’s Str8 UP 10,000 Little Steps to Healing, an organization that helps people leave gangs. She crawled out of the gang lifestyle thanks to the organization’s help, and similar to the elders, Father Andre treated her as Jorgina — as a human being — and not simply a gang member.
Sunn attained real sobriety from 2012 to 2018 but relapsed in October 2018 after her oldest son killed himself. She was sent back to rehab, which helped her recover; she will soon start a new job at the rehab centre.
“The story of justice talks about transformation. My teaching — and the teaching I keep getting in my entire life — is humility,” she added. “I do not have the answers … . (But) I’m very grateful for the things that have happened in my life.”
