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A review by justabean_reads
"Indian" in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power by Jody Wilson-Raybould
emotional
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
For those not following Canadian politics, Wilson-Raybould was the first Indigenous person to serve as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, which position she held until she refused to bend (or possibly break) the rules for the sake of political expediency. Then followed shuffling her aside, cover ups, scandal, smear campaigns and expulsion, possibly not in that order. Following getting kicked out of the governing party, she ran as an independent, won, then retired from federal politics before the last election.
It's probably mostly of interest if you were following the above, since it's primarily "this was my perspective on what happened." However, I also appreciated that she went into the day to day life and duties of a cabinet minister, how party politics work (or don't work), and a lot of how her background as a lawyer and a regional chief of the AFN played into how she saw all this. She's a mix of very unimpressed with a lot of how the sausage gets made stuff generally, and our current government and prime minister specifically, and proud of the work she got done, including working on legalising medically-assisted dying and recreational cannabis use. She talked a lot about how much she wanted to do on Crown-Indigenous relations, but couldn't get any movement on due to lack of political will, and the overwhelming feeling is frustration and disappointment that so much of the Sunny Ways good will of 2015 got wasted on bullshit when we could have made real change. There was an epilogue about her feelings on how Canadian politics should work, which I felt ran a little long, as she'd made most of the same points earlier.
I'm glad I got her reading the audiobook. She's got a great speaking voice, and added a lot of expression.
It's probably mostly of interest if you were following the above, since it's primarily "this was my perspective on what happened." However, I also appreciated that she went into the day to day life and duties of a cabinet minister, how party politics work (or don't work), and a lot of how her background as a lawyer and a regional chief of the AFN played into how she saw all this. She's a mix of very unimpressed with a lot of how the sausage gets made stuff generally, and our current government and prime minister specifically, and proud of the work she got done, including working on legalising medically-assisted dying and recreational cannabis use. She talked a lot about how much she wanted to do on Crown-Indigenous relations, but couldn't get any movement on due to lack of political will, and the overwhelming feeling is frustration and disappointment that so much of the Sunny Ways good will of 2015 got wasted on bullshit when we could have made real change. There was an epilogue about her feelings on how Canadian politics should work, which I felt ran a little long, as she'd made most of the same points earlier.
I'm glad I got her reading the audiobook. She's got a great speaking voice, and added a lot of expression.