Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsSpeeches made by JWR over a 10-year span
Reviewed in Canada on October 18, 2019
This book is a series of speeches or addresses made by JWR to differing forums, often Indigenous. Each address is clearly and crisply laid out. Her aim is to implement the United Nations declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples (UNDRIP) in Canada. So much is laudable.
One of the problems with the format is the implicit considerable and tedious repetition. Another is that the lay (non-legal) public, like myself, are not familiar with legal declarations such as UNDRIP and section 35 of the Charter for Canada.
JWR clearly has a fine brain and a real grip on the issues. But, by excising the repetition and giving statements of UNDRIP, section 35 and so forth, with discussion, the book would be much more accessible to lay readers like myself.
I have great admiration for her courage and honour as the Attorney General of Canada and contempt for her treatment by the Liberal Party of Canada and its leader.
I am troubled by signs of rigidity in certain statements that she makes in the book, such as 'Chiefs are always men' and so on. The Indigenous peoples themselves should be given the opportunity by their leaders to show flexibility in creating their own rules and laws.
