In a specifically Aboriginal perspective, Gord Hill (Zig Zag), a popular historian from the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation, addresses the corporate pressure on native governance in Canada. The caption to one of his powerful political cartoons addressing land tenure and band councils, in the context of the Indian Act reads “All Hail the New Chief – Chief Executive Officer that is!.” In this powerful expression of the complexities and complicities of contemporary native land tenure and economic development, it seems to me, that Zig Zag has given us a universally applicable image of the assertion of corporate will within neo-liberal regimes, where pressure is brought to bear on individual elected leaders, and whole polities even, through inducements and deterrents both legal and illegal. In the SNC Lavalin debacle we have a case-in-point. Here an elected indigenous leader, not just of her own people but of all Canadians, the Attorney General of Canada, was allegedly put under pressure in service of Lavalin’s corporate good.
At the end of her testimony to the House of Commons justice committee the former Attorney General states “…my understanding of the rule of law has also been shaped by my experiences as an Indigenous person and as an Indigenous leader. The history of Crown-Indigenous relations in this country includes a history of the rule of law not being respected. Indeed, one of the main reasons for the urgent need for justice and reconciliation today is that, in the history of our country, we have not always upheld foundational values such as the rule of law in relations to Indigenous Peoples. And I have seen the negative impacts for freedom, equality and a just society this can have first-hand.” It is, clearly, this indigenous perspective she must have of the sustained and insidious mechanism of influence, the co-option and/or coercion by the few, of those who are elected to serve the many, that made it impossible for Jodi Wilson-Raybould not to put her foot down for the rule of law, on behalf of all Canadians!
https://globalnews.ca/news/5006450/jody-wilson-raybould-testimony-transcript/
The Koboi Project 
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