Jody’s face is in the lower right corner. I’m there on the right, too, with long hair, holding a clipboard 🙂
Below is a video with Jody Wilson-Raybould promoting her new book, Reconciling History: A Story of Canada. (1)
I worked on Jody’s campaign when she ran as an Independent for federal politics in the area I live in.
I loved door-knocking with her and getting to know what an amazing person she is. She has a history of standing for justice and peace in her many roles:
From Wikipedia: 2000- 2003, she was a Crown attorney in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside.
In 2003, she took a position as a process advisor at the BC Treaty Commission, a body established to oversee the negotiations of modern treaties between First Nations and the Crown.
In 2004, she was elected commissioner by the chiefs of the First Nations Summit. She served as commissioner for nearly 7 years, one and a half of which she spent as the acting chief commissioner, earning a reputation for bringing opposing sides together in the complex treaty negotiation process.
Jody was elected to council for the We Wai Kai Nation in January 2009, a role that she credits for strengthening her understanding and commitment to work at the provincial and national level advocating for First Nations’ governance.
She was first elected regional chief of the BC Assembly of First Nations in 2009. The regional chief is elected by the 203 First Nations in BC. She is credited with bringing the chiefs together, which was reflected in her being re-elected regional chief in November 2012. She won on the first ballot with nearly 80% of the vote.
Jody began serving as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada (MOJAG) on November 4, 2015, becoming the first Indigenous person and third woman to hold the office.
Jody served in federal politics in Canada as justice minister and attorney general from 2015 to 2019, and briefly as veterans affairs minister and associate national defence minister in 2019 until she resigned in response to statements from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the SNC-Lavalin affair.
At 12 minutes, in the video above, Jody recommends that Justin step aside. This YouTube was made October, 2024.
When we were working on her campaign to run as an Independent, she had just published a book called, Indian in the Cabinet (2021). She was coming back after short promos across Canada saying she was getting standing ovations.
The people knew . . . Run again, Jody!
Footnotes
(1) Jody Wilson-Raybould and Roshan Danesh, Reconciling History: A Story of Canada, October 29, 2024.
The totem pole forms the foundation for this unique and important oral history of Canada. Its goal is both toweringly ambitious and beautifully direct:
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- To tell the story of this country in a way that prompts readers to look from different angles, to see its dimensions, its curves, and its cuts.
- To see that history has an arc, just as the totem pole rises, but to realize that it is also in the details along the way that important meanings are to be found.
- To recognize that the story of the past is always there to be retold and recast, and must be conveyed to generations to come. That in the act of re-telling, meaning is found, and strength is built.
When it comes to telling the history of Canada, and in particular the history of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, we need to accept that the way in which our history has traditionally been told has not been a common or shared enterprise.
In many ways, it has been an exclusive and siloed one. Among the countless peoples and groups that make up this vast country, the voices and experiences of a few have too often dominated those of many others.
Reconciling History shares voices that have seldom been heard, and in this ground-breaking book they are telling and re-telling history from their perspectives.
Born out of the oral history in True Reconciliation, and complemented throughout with stunning photography and art, Reconciling History takes this approach to telling our collective story to an entirely different level.