Primitive societies and contemporary law: how tribal justice can help us rethink our justice

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze the reasons and assumptions of implementation of restorative justice as an alternative method of conflict resolution, and to establish a parallel with the indigenous leadership, presenting it as a form of application of this method. Initially, there is an analysis of restorative justice and how it is beyond criminal attorney binary model and retributive model, its principles and its operation. The following are the attributes of the indigenous leadership, as an example of legal practices. Finally, we discuss the possibilities of application of restorative justice in the Brazilian legal system and relations as tribal justice in organizational planning of the indigenous leadership. We conclude that, given the failures of the retributive model, it becomes necessary to search for new forms of conflict resolution, as the eye is the restoration of the damage and the reestablishment of severed ties. So that they are recomposed relations, not ruling parties, but giving them a chance to reorganize, affirming the autonomy of the community involved. It is also possible to conclude that this form of peacekeeping is present from primitive societies through the figure of the Indian chief, with his peacemaker agent function.