The Wall Street Journal has today asserted quite categorically that investigators believe that US$681 million was transferred via intermediaries to British Virgin Islands based company, Tanore Finance Corp. and from here into Prime Minister Najib Razak’s bank accounts. The Prime Minister has in turn threatened to sue and is insisting that the US$681 million,  was a political donation from a member of the Saudi royal family. The Malaysian Attorney General has confirmed this and further asserted that US$620 million was returned unused after the 2013 general elections. This is  corroborated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which has published a letter from a Saudi prince pledging that a sum of US$375 million, and referring to previous pledges as well. Further the  Bernama news agency has reported Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir as saying the funds wired into the Malaysian Prime Minister’s personal bank account were a “genuine” donation originating from Saudi Arabia. So which millions are which?

There has been a spate of teenage suicides on the native reserve of Attawapiskat. It is not abating . A state of emergency has been declared. This growing phenomenon has been in the news, taking headlines next to a celebration Canada`s generosity to Syrian immigrants. Indeed, as an immigrant myself, I can vouch for this nation’s generosity to and inclusion of newcomers regardless of race, religion or any other aspect of difference, still, somehow, this conjunction of events – the juxtaposition native despair and immigrant salvation, has hit me like a freight train. It brought to the surface my deep sense that our homemaking was founded on someone else’s displacement. This supplanting of one people by another is the historical reality of all nations, but it is an uncomfortably contemporary phenomena in the Americas. A deep malaise came over me, with respect to my own project and to this blog, and I am only just finding my way forward. This impetus has come to me by way of the crystallization of an idea – that in Canada, my new home, native suicide is a residual or attenuated iteration of a founding genocide. Suicide as Genocide.

I have been unable to move ahead with this blog in the last 8 weeks as I have been at a loss for words …. literally!! Although a lot has been happening in the this time I could not find the motivation or the words to comment or reflect on either the Malaysian or the Canadian situation. In Malaysia the financial and political funk that stimulated this blog in the first instance has become even more funked up – all sides are looking disingenuous as truthfulness and opportunism seem to have become inextricably enmeshed. All I can say on this topic for the moment, addressing especially those who are the foot-soldiers of the various generalissimos is – ‘Duck You Suckers!’ – after Sergio Leones’s tragi-comic cry of political disillusionment  ( I saw it as A Fistful of Dynamite decades ago in Malaysia). Friends struggling with the politics at home may not find this amusing, but the Canadian conundrum that has weakened my resolve is even less amusing …. I will try to find the words … please wait for my next post …

This is how it works on Turtle Island. This how Bumiputera play their game in Canada  (Canada is simply the nama orang putih for this part of native North America)! Kanonhstaton: 10-years after

At this point, having made contact with Chief Yahaan and expressed my sympathies with his cause, I feel it is necessary to state my connection and attitude towards Petronas. In 2001 I worked for Petronas in the capacity of a curator.  Then director of the Petronas Zainol Abidin Sharif (ZABAS) , kindly gave me a great opportunity – to curate the first retrospective of the important Malaysian artist Sulaiman Esa. It gave me the ability to apply and develop the approach that I first articulated in 1998 – that to build a meaningful interpretative frame for the contemporary art of South East Asia we must combine the study of Sacred Forms as developed by the likes of Nasr, Burkhardt and Coomaraswamy, combining this with social history, and ultimately, we should look ‘Beyond Art History”. Traditional art history with its chronologies and detailed stylistic differentiation is not so relevant to us, it is  uninteresting. The exhibition I curated and wrote for at the Galeri Petronas was titled Insyirah: lukisan Sulaiman Esa dari 1980 hingga 2000. I am proud of this work, and am grateful to Petronas for supporting it and for all their contributions to Malaysian art.

Petronas is a government corporation, so unlike Shell or Exxon, it has a natural obligation owed towards the nation as well as a natural loyalty owed in return by Malaysians. I feel that debt and I am proud of Petronas’ achievements in the corporate world. I want to see them succeeded in all their ventures. However, as a Malaysian who makes his home and is bringing his children up in British Columbia, my loyalties are complex. This blog explores this particular nexus of interests, my interests and the interests of those for whom I care, in the face of the events that are unfolding around me.

I am so happy today! I just spoke to the Chief. I had been trying to find him for months and finally through the kindness of his daughter got his home no. and made the call! I am about to send him my blog address by email and in acknowledgement of this moment and the heart of the matter at hand, I have posted his video on my blog, yet again (for the 4th time)!

I think that this a good moment in the flow of ideas (‘Bumiputera status’, ‘innovation levels’, ‘lock-in ‘, ‘post-law’), in which to return to the problems of the Lelu Island LNG project. Below is an extract, from Sm’ooyget Yahaan’s letter to Premier Justin Trudeau, summarizing the flow of events that have led to the present impasse.

“In early May (2015), following presentations by Petronas and independent science teams in three different locations, our community unanimously rejected an unprecedented offer of $1.15 billion (CAD) from Petronas to buy our support for their project.  This is the measure of our commitment to defending the wild salmon of the Skeena. If you lose the fish, you lose the people.

 Our voices are now being ignored. Soon after our vote, Petronas announced a conditional Final Investment Decision in the project. Failing to buy our consent, they began to act as if our consent was irrelevant. On July 14, the BC Government followed suit and approved the project in the Legislature. 

 When we heard in late August that the Prince Rupert Port Authority gave permission to PNW LNG to begin test drilling on and around Flora Bank, our people decided to take a stand on the ground.  On August 26, myself and a group of our people and supporters moved onto Lelu Island, and have been living there since, turning away surveyors and drillers who have already damaged eelgrass on Flora Bank and removed culturally modified trees from the island. Chiefs from the nine allied tribes, as well as the elected Lax Kw’alaams Band Council, stand together in continuing to assert that Flora Bank is off-limits to development. The actions of the contractors working for PNW LNG have not received community consent. Tensions are escalating.”

 Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEO of Research in Motion (Blackberry) and co-founder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, has said that the TPPA would damage innovation in Canada. The implication is that it could damage the Canadian economy and society irreparably. He argues that the agreement locks nations into their current technology innovation status, which for Canada is very low. Consequently  Canada will be selling  more low-margin traditional goods and importing a lot more high-margin intellectual property goods.  He also explains how  we are in an era in which all industries, however traditional are becoming IP based. Extrapolating from these points, I would suggest that any country that is not already on par or above the global average in technology innovation should feel very uncomfortable signing this trading agreement. The question to ask ourselves is –  Are we ready to be locked in?

So this is  another thing I have been trying to formulate/articulate – I remember Melayu Baru as a trope in Malaysian political discourse was launched at the UMNO General Assembly 1991 by Dr. Mahathir Mohamed. For him and for many, it symbolized the rise of the Malays above their ‘dilemma’ through an unashamed application of constitutionally enshrined ethnic privileges in all sectors of Malaysian and economic social life. Without questioning its ethical justification or endorsing  its success as social engineering, I want to note that the deployment of this term, has come to symbolize, for many Malaysians, the excesses of an elite cabal of Malays (and their many non-malay kuncu-kuncu of course).

Anyway it is really interesting how the one aspect of Malaysia’s TPPA deal that has been touted by the government as evidence of the safeguarding of our national integrity is the enshrineing of Bumi privilege within TPPA, protecting the Malays in the trade and competition scenarios that might arise in the future.  It is ironic that the command economy  inefficiencies of our ethnic system is seen, by global capitalism, as being worthy of a place on the new free-trade playing field.

Even more ironic though is the fact that this move might entrench outdated social engineering levers, that the newest of Malay thinkers like the late Suflan Shamsuddin fear are hampering and hindering the continued rise of the Malay race. So my formulation of the current Malay Dilemma goes like this – Does the TPPA, potentially, auger against what Suflan calls “the creation of an enlightened resilient Malay society which makes its own choice to be free from special privileges to compete and survive”?

So here is the thing  – arguments about which natives (be they Malay or Tsimshian peoples) have rights worthy of recognition by which nations blah blah that seems to be old hat in an age of TPP and its ilk. Nations themselves are in the process of signing away their legislative and jurisdictional privileges to the large corporate players of the global economy. Speaking in the context the analogous transatlantic treaty, the TTIP,  Alfred-Maurice De Zayas (independent expert on the promotion of democracy appointed by the human rights council of the UN) has warned, “We don’t want a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots. We don’t want an international order akin to post-democracy or post-law.”

A case in point is the penalties BC taxpayers will be liable for if our Province is compelled, by a Supreme Court decision, future electoral mandate or even an effective native blockade, to renege on their deal with Petronas. The point raised for consideration here is –  what how this possible, nay probable, legal conundrum might unfold in a jurisdictional future under the auspices of the TPPA!