Maybe I can answer that.
I do a lot of legal aid work. I represent a lot of aboriginals, both through legal aid and by way of their paying me privately. I don't make any differentiation between the two and how they're treated by me.
The difficulty seems to be that everyone who consults a criminal lawyer expects that lawyer to be their advocate in court, whether they're pleading guilty or having a trial. They all have the presumption of innocence.
In terms of the native community being overrepresented, there are two reserves near where I come from in London, and they are overrepresented in that more natives than non-natives per capita are being charged with offences. So I don't know how to answer that question, because it seems we have a lot of natives being charged in the first place. So obviously in some cases I'm representing more natives--given that they're part of the population--than non-native people. I don't know if that really answers your question.
In terms of what we are supposed to do, it's not just to make a deal. Sometimes it is. But at all times it is to see that they're treated fairly by the justice system. And that's what we're trying to do in all of those cases. Whether that means going to trial or whether it means a guilty plea and trying to mitigate their sentence or get a sentence that's fair and just for them, that is the role of any criminal defence lawyer.