The Imagine... cover explores a role reversal of sorts.
If the Indigenous community was able to put the canadian government under the scrutiny and control that the canadian government had exerted over them, there might be equal spaces of confusion.
I have placed our current prime minister on the stand because the current figurehead of the governance that has got us here has to be involved in the evolution of relationship that needs to happen for equity and justice to be served, First Nation by First Nation.
Oo ghani nzoo’ is a Dalkelh phrase meaning his/her words are good/truthful.
I put this phrase here as a type of invocation, believing that thought and intention towards good and truthful words will ultimately bring us somewhere better.
Title: Bizarro Law
This redesign of Action Comics 263 relates to an amendment of the Indian Act in 1927 where it became illegal to solicit legal help.
I use the Bizarro idea in this cover to help depict the madness that was the Indian Act. I leave it to the viewer to come to their own conclusions, but the layers of frustration, confusion, and inertia within this document and its history are many. This particular clause was repealed in 1951 but innumerable land claims in british columbia have still not been dealt with.
Much of this piece relates to the confusion I feel with these portions of the Indian Act. There is a feeling of an inability to make sense, that these laws were not only deeply controlling but built to confuse.
The Indian Act seems to be a document that was living in order to continue to limit the abilities of Indigenous peoples to survive and thrive, in order to limit Indigenous peoples whenever it served the Empire. Bizarro.
And devastating.
Inspiration cover
DC Comics Action Comics Vol 1 #263
April 1960
Cover Artists: Curt Swan, Stan Kaye
Writers: Otto Binder
Pencilers: Wayne Boring
Inkers: Stan Kaye
Editors: Mort Weisinger