The Peacemaker Program on Groote grew out of a series of conversations between Roderick Mamarika and ALC Anthropologist Hugh Bland.

These discussions identified a lack of formal community involvement in dispute resolution and a lack of support for those community members who informally sought to resolve community disputes. It was agreed that formal mediation training would provide a skill base allowing community members to become formally involved in disputes as peacemakers.

 It is the strong relationships of the Anthropologists that the advice provided to the Peacemaker Groups help to open communication lines with other service providers who operate in the same space; such as police, the judiciary and the Dept of Corrections.

Men and women work together to mediate community disputes. The Peacemakers do not impose solutions upon the disputing parties but apply conventional mediation practices to provide a safe, calm environment for the parties to come together to discuss the issues at the heart of the problem and to then allow the parties to decide how to move forward.