The Unruly (Indigenous) Woman: Political Cartoon Representations of Jody Wilson-Raybould, 2015-2021

This paper analyzes political cartoon representations of Jody Wilson-Raybould, Canada’s first Indigenous Minister of Justice and Attorney General. While Wilson-Raybould received substantial press coverage as a first of her kind in Canadian political circles, she is also well known for her open dissent and rejection of cabinet confidence during the 2019 SNC-Lavalin affair. As a consequence, she was regularly represented in national media as an iron maiden or an unruly woman. However, our research hypothesizes that the gendered media tropes attached to Wilson-Raybould are likely to be influenced by her indigenous identity, particularly in visual depictions. While gender and politics research has focused separately on representations of female and racialized politicians, little research has combined the two contexts to consider how issues of indigeneity intersect with gendered and racialized ideals of political leadership. Our investigation employs the following research question: to what extent does the intervention of indigenous feminism offer the opportunity to rethink conventional portrayals of the unruly woman in political cartoons? Following a brief survey of the research intersections between indigenous feminism and gendered mediation, the paper employs an intersectional feminist critical discourse analysis. In doing so, we address how media tropes of indigeneity and gender work to establish Jody Wilson-Raybould as an unruly participant in Canadian politics. A total of 50 cartoons were assessed in this study. We argue that indigenous feminism provides an opportunity to address the relationship between settler colonialism and intersectional identities, such as gender and race in Canadian political humour. Indigenous feminism as a form of critical discourse analysis sheds light on how political humour enforces the ongoing oppression of Indigenous women. The findings of this study reveal that cartoon representations of Wilson-Raybould centred around three key themes: (1) the victim of physical violence, (2) the instigator of emotional violence, and (3) the proponent of physical violence. These images explicitly highlighted the relationship between the dominance and aggression associated with unruly femininity and common stereotypes about indigenous women, such as being overweight, lazy and dependent on government support. Overall, the findings emphasize the tensions between femininity, Indigeneity and politics, marking Wilson-Raybould as an outsider to political life.