My father Arumugam Deva Rajah is a senior member of the Malaysian legal fraternity. Despite his disappointment at my not following in his footsteps, he fully supports my endeavours in art.  He is pictured above ritually breaking coconut, on stage at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur during my Koboi performance for the Seni Di Kota event in December 2015.

Janet Annesley former vice president for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and Shell executive is now chief of staff for the Natural Resources Minister in the new and purportedly eco-committed Liberal government. If only the oil itself was so close to the surface!!

The Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (CNSOPB) which overseas drilling applications includes a board member who worked at Shell Canada and Royal Dutch Shell for 30 years.

The problematic twinning of Big Power and Big Money is universal. One of former PM Stephen Harper’s longest serving advisors, Bruce Carson is facing three charges of illegal lobbying Yup! Cash is allegedly King allegedly everywhere!! Keith Stewart, head of the climate and energy campaign for Greenpeace Canada, observes, “Carson could lobby for the oil industry at the highest levels without anyone raising an eyebrow because the Harper government forgot that they work for Canadians, not oil CEOs.”

Last May the Lax Kw’alaams Nation , a small band of  3,600 members, rejected a CAD 1.15 billion dollar offer due to concerns over damage to the largest eelgrass forests on Canada’s west coast which is a habitat for young salmon.

The apartheid system was based on Canada’s Indian Act. There are many parallels between our many deeply racist institutions like the  residential schools and South Africa`s oppressive systems.

Gord Hill is a Warrior with a pen.This is an image he uses to address the nexus economic and legal realities of native Canada. He addresses the goal of the state to assimilate Indigenous peoples, via the conversion of reserve lands to private property under the pretext of creating economic self-sufficiency.  ‘Self-government’ agreements come with development contracts and treaty agreements remove the natives from the ambit of the Indian Act and change their reserve lands to private property.

2 Cash is King, copyright by Niranjan Rajah. Original image by Zig Zag.

This is the second sketch! Face paint and all! Malaysian social media is disseminating Mahathir’s claim that for Najib ‘Cash is King!’ Indeed, the temptations of money are deep regardless of the identities of the parties involved, and today it seems that what’s true for Malaysians operating at home, may also be true for Malaysian operations abroad! Yes… way across the Pacific Ocean, here in British Columbia, it seems that, Malaysian Cash is, indeed, King!’