Circle Teachers

Harold and Phil Gatensby are members of the Raven Clan of the Inland Tlingit Nation from a community with a population of four hundred in the south west corner of the Yukon Terr. Canada, called Carcross. Phil and Harold are family men. It’s on their families’ behalf that they have dedicated themselves to creating safer, healthier communities for future generations. Having faced many difficult challenges with the justice system, and other institutions in their lives, including residential school, they have managed to take the experiential knowledge gained, combined with the traditional knowledge of their people, and participate in the development of a process that is now known as community based justice. Community based justice is about community empowerment, building partnerships, sharing power, using a common value base, communicating, accountability, and safety. Over the course of 35 five years Harold and Phil have introduced Native Spiritual programs in jails, trained many Yukon community people as well as communities across North America and Europe in the use of peacemaking Circles, and facilitated Circles in response to serious criminal cases in the Yukon and other provinces. Community based Circles are a unique process that nurtures the four aspects of the human being and can help the individual, the family, the community, and the nation.