What first triggered your concern that unresolved issues among Canada’s First Nations could lead to an armed uprising on a scale larger than already seen at Oka and elsewhere?

Douglas Bland: One day a few years ago, as I was driving to Ottawa and half-listening to a CBC radio morning program, an elder from a First Nations community north of Kenora, Ontario, described the circumstances of his land and his people. He spoke soberly and quietly about the wasted young people in his community who lived without place or pride. He described how criminals, drugs, and booze had corroded his village.
          But mostly he spoke of how disaffected, angry, hostile, and increasingly militant young natives—“the stepping stones to our future,” as he put it—were abandoning their families, their villages, and their sense of themselves as a people. He feared greatly not only for his own people, but also for the others, the people of Canada. “I don’t think we elders can control the young ones much longer … they’re not listening to us. They’re listening to outsiders and those ones are bad people.”
          Immediately, the scattered symptoms of a growing national crisis—dysfunctional Canadian aboriginal policies, failures of leaders both native and non-native, crumbling aboriginal governance structures, failed schools and failing welfare programs, “days of protest,” and occasional violent confrontations between aboriginal people and other Canadians—fell into a pattern for me.

What was the pattern?

Bland: On the one hand, I could see that the only missing ingredient preventing these loosely connected forces from erupting into a full-blown insurgency was a unifying narrative about injustices, promises betrayed, and rights denied—as extolled by a charismatic revolutionary leader who preached that these crimes provided just motives for rebellion and independence.
          On the other hand, I realized that what was missing in the non-aboriginal community was a narrative alerting Canadians to the national danger that failed policies and inept leaders had left waiting on their doorsteps.
          It was the prescient elder from Kenora who first pointed me towards this dreadful future. He deserves much of the credit for this story, because it was he who inspired me to write it.

Some people might think it unrealistic that a country could be brought to its knees by the insurgency of a minority group, but your training in strategic defence and terrorist activity suggests otherwise, it would seem. In your view, are Canadians turning a blind eye to reality?

Bland: Commentators, politicians, and others commonly respond to any suggestion that Canada could be heading towards a general aboriginal insurgency by remarking that “most native Canadians are peaceful, reasonable people.” And I agree most are.
          But I’m not concerned with most of the people. I’m concerned with the small minority who are not peaceful and reasonable but who are angry, militant, and hostile to the very idea of Canada as they see it today.

So it is a realistic scenario?

Bland: It’s important to remember that most uprisings are led by a small hard-core of dedicated radicals. The so-called “troubles” in Ireland, for example, were directed by a hardcore of perhaps no more than 500 people, but they succeeded in tying down the British army for twenty-five years. This small group, moreover, was supported by Irish citizens who were mostly “peaceful and reasonable,” but who in reality were rarely neutral in the struggle between the British and the Irish Republican Army.

You said there was no narrative in the non-aboriginal community to open peoples’ eyes to a similar conflict in Canada—your reason for writing Uprising—but why is this prospect not recognized, given the steady and increasing flow of news stories?

Bland: Are Canadians turning a blind eye to reality? I think most are just genuinely unaware of the reality out there on the land. Aboriginal and non-aboriginal leaders, for the most part, seem convinced they can play safely near the edge of disaster while the underlying problems fester.
          For example, after he had left office as prime minister, Paul Martin was questioned at a Senate hearing not that long ago by Senator Romeo Dallaire, who of course previously, as a Canadian Force's general, had headed the ill-fated UN "peace-keeping" mission just before the genocide fully erupted in Rwanda. When Senator Dallaire asked whether he thought a native uprising was possible in Canada, Mr. Martin responded, "I hope not, because hope is all we have."
          Of course Canadians take a cue from the country's top political leaders. When one says his policy is to "hope" an uprising won't happen, you can see that citizens might feel justified thinking it's not too serious a matter. Or worse, this suggests that politicians may not have given any thought at all as to how to handle such a crisis if it were to erupt.

You’ve pointed out that Chief Tecumseh’s statement back in 1795, about how one day aboriginal peoples could “win our country back from the whites,” today appears on the website of the Assembly of First Nations. Just how strongly do you think that historical awareness in now felt in the aboriginal community?

Bland: In my research, and in watching the ever-emboldened actions and statements of aboriginal leaders, I believe three aboriginal narratives are coming together and becoming the new single narrative for the aboriginal community.
          The first strand in the story is about conquest, thief of land, and false treaties, all crimes committed by deceitful “white settlers.” The second strand is a story of shame and poverty and “cultural genocide” that has continued to this day, represented most vividly by the residential schools policy of former governments. The final strand, which arises from the first two, is that aboriginal people are and always have been independent, sovereign people who carelessly allowed themselves to be exploited and who traded their dignity for government handouts.

So is this integrated narrative taking hold with Canadian aboriginals?

Bland: Their leaders today are telling their people, and Canadians generally, the new story: Never again will we be exploited, and furthermore, we can take back the past to redress the future. In my view, these leaders are increasingly disassociating themselves and their people from Canada and the idea that they are citizens of Canada.

Is that a precondition for an uprising?

Bland: There is a theory of insurgency that postulates that once a person has, in his or her mind, turned against a dictator or a regime and said to themselves, “No! I will no longer accept my unjust situation,” you cannot force him or her to recant that decision. You can beat them and rob them and take the lives of family and friends, but they will silently defy the dictator forever. They may be silent for long periods, but given the right circumstances they will suddenly rise up and rebel, and most often do so violently.
          Planting that seed of defiance in the minds of a community is the first duty of every revolutionary leader. It is not at all odd that many of these leaders “preach” the gospel of historic wrongs to their congregations and promise to lead them to the new “promised land.” Nor is it odd that along the way they produce much grief and many martyrs.

Even before publication of your book you’ve already had strong responses from people who heard about Uprising, or read drafts of the manuscript. What are people saying?

Bland: People, and especially people well acquainted with the history and present circumstances of Canadian/aboriginal relations and insurgency tactics, seem immediately taken with the underlying idea of a coordinated uprising.
          What is more interesting to me is that most informed people, non-experts included, can almost immediately sketch out the plot line and as I coach them along by asking, “Yes, and so what do your think will happen next?”
          It is most interesting of all, however, to see how obvious the dangerous sequence of events becomes—if one begins the story with the assumption that aboriginal people could come together under one leader and then bring the country to a standstill.

Do you personally have friends and colleagues in Canada’s aboriginal community?

Bland: My connection to Canada’s aboriginal peoples developed over the years as I moved about the country and as I changed professions and so on. I went to high school in Winnipeg’s north end and in River Heights in the late 1950s. I witnessed native Canadians in the inner city, for the most part in very sad circumstances.
          My brothers and I hunted in the marshes north of the city, where we saw another side of the native story, one much closer to nature. One autumn day we met an old man—you would call him an elder these days—who let us use his tiny boat landing to get into the vast Netley Marsh. He lived in a decaying ancient log cabin and some days we sat with him after the hunt and shared our day’s experiences with him. He would describe where we should hunt as the seasons changed. In time, we developed a cheerful relationship based on a common eagerness to be “out on the land.”
          That old Indian is long gone, of course. But to my amazement my brother, entirely by chance several years ago, came across an ink-and-pencil sketch of the very cabin where we used to sit with our friend. It now hangs on my wall beside me as I type these words.

Other experiences?

Bland: Later I met and worked with many aboriginal people during my life as a Canadian soldier. They were fine comrades and some might recognize aspects of themselves in the pages of this book!
          As an academic, I am privileged to count as friends several distinguished First Nation Canadians who continue to make significant contributions to our universities and to public life.
          I have also been honoured to share the podium with aboriginal leaders and to speak at public meetings where the main topic dealt with aboriginal affairs and relations among our various “multicultural” communities. These meetings often developed into candid, and even at times blunt, conversations. But for me they were invaluable experiences. In such sessions I met and conversed with aboriginal leaders, including Chief Phil Fontaine and others.
          My oddest encounter with a native Canadian, however, occurred one autumn morning a few years ago at the Ottawa Airport. I was checking in for a flight to Winnipeg.

Hunting season?

Bland: You can’t take the fall waterfowl migration out of a Prairie boy’s blood! Anyway, next to me stood a very handsome, young native man whom I identified to myself as being Cree. The flight attendant looked at our tickets and said, “Are you gentlemen travelling together?”
          Puzzled by the question, we looked at each other. We could not have been more different in appearances. I am short, blue-eyed, and grey. He was tall and brown, had deep-black eyes, and his high-cheek-boned face was surrounded by long, thick, black hair. My unknown travelling companion replied, “What makes you think we’re together?”
          “Well,” she remarked holding up the tickets, “you both have the same name, Bland.”
          After we were checked into our separate flights to Winnipeg, we two Blands—Charlie and Douglas—stood chatting and comparing family histories. He was from the fly-in God’s Lake First Nation in northern Manitoba. His great-grandfather immigrated to Canada from Yorkshire, England, in the early 1900s and remained in north Manitoba his whole life, working as a Hudson’s Bay carpenter. My grandfather arrived in Kingston, Ontario, in 1911 after he, too, left Yorkshire, England.
          As my new friend turned to go to his boarding station we shook hands. He said, “Look, there are lots of us Blands at God’s Lake. You should come up sometime and meet the folks.”
          As Charlie Bland walked away, I called after him, “Maybe I will someday. They might be my folks, too.”
          The point of this little story is that in Canada if your family has been here long enough and if we embrace the definition of “aboriginal” widely enough, we Canadians are perhaps not as separated a people as some would have us believe.

Authors who sound warnings are sometimes criticized as “alarmists.” How would you describe yourself?

Bland: An alarmist, by most definitions, creates an exaggerated image causing needless panic. I am simply using fiction—some authors call it political fiction—to reach a wide public audience in order to expose what I, and others, see as an apprehended danger.

You mention other authors?

Bland: Charles Dickens, for example, wrote his ever-popular A Christmas Carol which today many read as a heart-warming story about an old man’s conversion and reform that led to the rescue of the crippled boy Tiny Tim.
          However, Dickens wrote that fiction to describe the ghastly state of the industrial revolution and the misery it caused in the cities of Britain in his day. His three ghosts presented, in turn, images of Britain’s happy past, frightful present, and—the apparition he dreaded most of all—the deadly future. Some believe that Dickens’ fiction was largely responsible for the development of a social conscience and significant social reforms that followed in Britain.
          Other British writers—Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, and George Orwell, for example—used fiction to alert the public to serious social fault lines in an effort to forestall them from becoming reality. Some people may have labelled those authors as alarmists, but in reality they made important literary and social contributions to Great Britain and to many other societies as well.
          Uprising was written with the same objectives in mind. It is my hope that there is still time for reasonable people in Canada to ensure that any “exaggerations” in this story can, in the future, be safely remembered as mere “bland fiction.”