1 ayno Fisher, Lenus 'Tubby Door and I sauntered along the main line of the Canadian National Railway. rom heavy use the two steel ribbons usually glisten like the edge of a newly sharpened knife. But on this particular Sunday evening, the nineteenth day of August, 1990, the tracks were covered with a thin coating of rust. We walked to the outer border of Long Lake Reserve 58. Then we turned back towards our protest camp at the other end of the one-square mile reserve about 200 miles northeast of Thunder Bay. Only hours earlier we had removed the obstacles that had blocked east-west traffic on the line for seven days. About 80 miles to the south, the people of Mobert Reserve held firm to their blockade of the main Canadian Pacific Railway line. These actions were but part of an extraordinary Indian summer of activism initiated in June when Elijah Harper (Cree) successfully blocked the progress of the Meech Lake accord through the Manitoba legislature. Practically overnight Elijah became a hero for millions of Canadians opposed to Meech Lake, but particularly for Native people who were suddenly given a champion in a system of Canadian government that until then had proven almost impervious to the direct exercise of aboriginal political will. No doubt some of the anger aroused by the aboriginal sabotage of Meech Lake found expression on July 11 in the armed assault of the Sur6t6 du Quebec on the Mohawk defenses against the expansion of a golf course in Oka, Quebec. Leading the successful repulse of the Quebec provincial police were members of the Mohawk Warriors Society, intent on gaining the credibility lost to them earlier that spring in gun battles with their Mohawk opponents at Akwesasne on the Ontario-Quebec-New York border. At the heart of this bitter disagreement in Indian country were different views about the uses and abuses of aboriginal sovereignty. A major case in point involved the existence of gambling casinos in the New York sector of the reserve. Drawing heavily on the writings of Mohawk elder Louis Hall, the Warriors looked to gambling as one pillar of a viable Mohawk economy independent from the meddling hand of outside governments. On the other hand the Warriors' opponents saw the casinos as part of larger intrusion of many non-Indian influences, including those associated with organized crime, onto the reserve. The striking TV images of Elijah Harper and of the Mohawk Warriors, the former working within the existing political order and the latter representing a radical alternative to it, struck a powerful chord in Indian country. Both alternatives seemed to hold out a ray of hope for many Native people who were losing any confidence that it was possible to reverse the overwhelming trend in history aimed at their collective dispossession and the gradual dismemberment of their distinct aboriginal societies. Implicit in the defensive tactics of both Elijah Harper and the Mohawk Warriors at Oka was a call to action. Aboriginal people throughout Ontario and across Canada answered. The Mohawks of Kanewake on the south shore of the St. Lawrence just east of Montreal were the first to support their endangered relatives who were locked in siege with the Sur6t6 du Quebec. The Kanewake Mohawks placed blockades on the Mercier Bridge, infuriating commuters from nearby Chateauguay and Lasalle. Before the summer was over Canadians were to watch with astonishment the TV pictures of outraged mobs on the south shore burning Indians in effigy and stoning escaping vehicles full of Mohawk women, elders