effort to take back their land. In the aftermath, they lost not only their land but also, it seemed for generations, the essence of their ancient culture – “the echo from the past.” The People’s greatest loss that spring was their belief that they would live a traditional way of life freely and forever in harmony with the Great Spirit on the generous, open prairies bounded by the Rocky Mountains, the Red River, and the endlessly flowing North and South Saskatchewan rivers. Among the Cree some now ask: is the ancient culture truly lost forever? Or is it alive, carried forward by the echo of the past that the Elders guard as the People await another day and the return of a great chief to lead the faithful?
Tecumseh’s Vision
“MY HEART IS A STONE. HEAVY WITH SADNESS FOR MY PEOPLE; cold with the knowledge that NO TREATY will keep the whites out of our land; hard with determination to resist as long as I live and breathe. Now we are weak and many of our people are afraid. But Hear Me: a single twig breaks, but the bundle of twigs is strong. Someday I will embrace our brother tribes and draw them into a bundle and together we will win our country back from the whites.”
Tecumseh, Shawnee chief, circa 1795
(Quotation on Assembly of First Nations website – capitalized emphasis added by the AFN –http://www.afn.ca)
Background commentary
“We have a right to be frustrated, concerned, angry – anger that’s building and building.”
Phil Fontaine, Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations (CTV News, May 15, 2007)
“It’s time to quit being loyal Canadians …We don’t need the white man’s money. We need a share of our own wealth.”
“There are only two ways of dealing with the white man. Either you pick up a gun or you stand between him and his money.”
Terrance Nelson, Chief, Roseau River First Nation, Manitoba (CTV News, May 15, 2007)
Senator Roméo Dallaire: “We have heard about the Aboriginal Day of Action. Is the internal security risk rising as the youth see themselves more and more disenfranchised? In fact, if they ever coalesced, could they not bring this country to a standstill?”
The Right Honourable Paul Martin: “My answer, and the only one we all have, is we would hope not.”
Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, Ottawa, Tuesday, April 8, 2008
“The little discomfort that I feel after this incredible journey pales in comparison to what our people suffer every single day.”
Shawn Atleo, newly elected Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, after an exhausting all-night marathon of balloting (Calgary press conference, July 24, 2009)
DAY ONE
Sunday, August 29
Sunday, August 29, 2345 hours
On the Ottawa River, west of Petawawa
Alex cut the outboard motor and let his small boat drift into the dark, shallow bay of the island in the middle of the Ottawa River. One by one, the other five aluminum fishing boats of his makeshift raiding party pulled in near him. The boats were painted mud brown, their motors muffled by burlap covers. His party’s weapons, as yet unloaded, were also covered, to avoid clattering against the metal hulls.
The current, always strong in the upper reaches of the Ottawa, tugged at the boats, threatening to pull them back into midstream. Luckily the crews had learned enough from their numerous rehearsals to jockey the boats into the planned order and keep them there for the next dangerous leg across the broad river and onto the beach at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. Well, that’s already something, Alex thought.
Twice he flicked his red-shaded flashlight, signalling the helmsmen to shut down their outboard motors in unison – the better to camouflage their number from curious ears. Another instruction remembered and carried out properly, even with the adrenaline pumping. That was good, because things were about to get a lot more complicated.
The boats had all been loaded according to his careful instructions. Backpacks, carrying-boards for heavy loads, first-aid kits, and an assortment of straps, ropes, wires, and cutting tools – “a place for everything and everything in its place,” as his old Airborne platoon sergeant had never tired of reminding him. But the crews tonight – seven per boat, a helmsman and six carriers – though they styled themselves “warriors,” did not have the experience of his old sergeant. Their description of themselves was in fact a wild exaggeration, for his troop was in reality a motley, inexperienced, mostly young, gang of natives.
They certainly weren’t soldiers. Alex had shaped their enthusiasm as best he could over the past six weeks, and he figured if all went well they could at least keep some discipline on the march from the beach to the target and back again. Now he watched through the darkness as they unbundled their assorted rifles, shotguns, and the one automatic weapon picked up from “the merchant” at Akwesasne. The helmsmen checked the readiness of their boats and each then flashed two red signals back to Alex.
“So it begins,” he muttered to himself. He knew that other raids were under way across the country, although he knew none of the details of any of them. For Alex and his team, what they were about to do in Petawawa was the only mission that counted.
* * *
Across the river, on Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, Military Police Corporal Joan Newman tried not to spill a lukewarm cup of instant coffee on her way to her patrol car. Join the Armed Forces, she thought bitterly. See the world. Yeah, well, they didn’t mention the part about marrying a warrant officer who’d come back from Africa with a drinking problem. Or aiming for the paratroops and winding up a military policeman instead.
Now divorced, Joan was looking at spending the remaining four exciting years of her current enrolment patrolling half-empty bases on dark, lonely nights. And drinking too much while wondering what … Damn! She had spilled her coffee. No time to change her green military sweater either. Her boss was a real stickler for keeping to the regular patrol schedule, even though she, and no doubt other MPs, had pointed out it just made things more predictable for anybody up to anything worse than the occasional drunken fist fight. Not that anybody ever was. As she got into the car, Joan told herself for the hundredth time that this was not the life she’d planned for herself.
* * *
Alexander Gabriel, full-blood Algonquin (so his grandfather insisted), was born on the Golden Lake Reserve near Eganville, Ontario. Other kids on the reserve had made fun of him because he did well in school. When he turned eighteen, he enlisted in the army as an infantry officer cadet, partly for the adventure, partly to get away from the life the other reserve kids were heading for, and partly because he was in awe of his Uncle Simon’s heroic and much-honoured service in Korea. Alex was sent to Royal Military College at Kingston to serve Canada; however, he promised his grandfather he would remain true to his people’s traditions.
Unfortunately, he had quickly come to realize that there was little room for his native traditions in the army or anywhere else outside the reserve. When his classmates at “the zoo,” as cadets refer to RMC, called him “chief” or
