Elaine Enns’ Life & Activism

Elaine has been working in justice movements since 1989.  She was mentored in the pioneering generation of contemporary restorative justice practitioners focusing on the Criminal Justice System as well as schools, churches and communities.  For the past two decades Elaine has explored how restorative justice principles apply to historical violations, including issues of decolonization, intergenerational trauma and healing.  In 2015 she received a Doctor of Ministry degree from St. Andrews College, Saskatoon, and in 2021 published a book (co-authored with her partner, activist theologian Ched Myers) Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization (Cascade).  It explores the inward and outward journeys required of European Settler descendants trying to reckon with “haunted” histories and landscapes, to better equip us to practice restorative solidarity with Indigenous and other marginalized peoples in our home places.  Born and raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Elaine now lives in the Ventura River Watershed of southern California in traditional unceded and untreatied Chumash territory where she is co-director of Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (www.bcmonline.org). Elaine co-authored the two-volume Ambassadors of Reconciliation: A New Testament Theology and Diverse Christian Practices of Restorative Justice and Peacemaking, with Ched Myers, (Orbis Books, 2009). She has published over a dozen articles which you can find here.

Elaine describes her work in restorative justice through 2019 in an article here. To see her latest thinking, read Healing Haunted Histories.

Learn more about Decolonization and Restorative Solidarity