Is this book fiction or non-fiction?

Some readers may consider far-fetched Douglas Bland’s fictional work about a terrorist-style strike by disciplined Aboriginals that paralyzes Canada’s government and leads to United States intervention to secure its vital energy supplies.

Yet a small band of well-organized insurgents need not occupy the entire country, in the manner of an invading army, to gain dominance. They need only seize key installations that are vulnerable, a time-tested formula for those seeking to cripple or overthrow a regime.

Even so, some may still find the plot of Uprising unrealistic, doubting that anger and resentment in Canada’s First Nations communities could ever be strong enough to spark an uprising.

That is why Blue Butterfly is publishing this Newsmakers’ Guide to Uprising. All the stories are real. If Bland’s book was non-fiction, these would be the footnotes. Each news report is authenticated by source. First Nations’ websites, also linked, speak for themselves. Every government report and academic study referenced on this Newsmakers’ site documents conditions which over the decades have mostly been addressed, as prime minister Louis St. Laurent put it more than half a century ago, by “a state of benign neglect.”

Newsmakers’ Guide to Uprising as a source for facts will be updated as this story unfolds. It includes statements on the public record such as this exchange on April 8, 2008, before the Senate Committee on Aboriginal People at the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa:

Senator Romeo Dallaire: “We have heard about the Aboriginal Day of Action. Is the internal security risk rising as the youth see themselves more and more disfranchised? In fact, if they ever coalesced, could they not bring this country to a standstill?”

Right Honourable Paul Martin (former Prime Minister and champion of First Nations’ issues): “My answer, and the only one we all have, is we would hope not.”

Is ‘hope’ indeed the only policy? Can nobody read the clues? The Oka stand-off in Quebec, Burnt Church in Nova Scotia, Caledonia's division and stalemate in Ontario, commercial fishery confrontations in British Columbia . . . warnings from top Aboriginal leaders about “growing anger”  . . . days of action . . . barricading of principal bridges, railway tracks, and highways in Quebec and Ontario . . . a half-dozen municipalities in Manitoba under the control of Aboriginal vigilante gangs . . . a well-orchestrated prison break by First Nation inmates in Regina . . . and next?