This book makes a practical and ethical case for the revitalisation of Indigenous justice systems.

Moving beyond existing scholarship that has tended to focus on incorporating Indigenous perspectives within existing law and justice frameworks, this book shifts the focus to recognising Indigenous justice systems as complete, living legal orders in their own right, grounded in Indigenous science, knowledge systems, and authority. Rather than treating justice as a distant legal concept controlled by courts and institutions, this book examines what genuine justice looks like when it is relationship-based and grounded in community, accountability, and collective healing. Drawing centrally on the practices of Māori, the Indigenous Peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand, the book evaluates how disputes are addressed, how harm is understood, how accountability is restored, and how healing becomes central rather than secondary. Based on lived experience and community knowledge, but setting these within an international comparative analysis of Indigenous courts in the United States and Canada, the book demonstrates that Indigenous justice systems are not a threat to the justice and rights of non-Indigenous peoples. They are, rather, the pathway to a more equitable legal system for all.

This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers and others with interests in Indigenous law and governance, sovereignty, decolonisation, and justice reform.

Maryann Stancich is an Indigenous Law Lecturer at the University of Waikato, Te Piringa Faculty of Law, Aotearoa New Zealand. Maryann's work focuses on Indigenous rights and legal issues affecting Indigenous Peoples.