ABSTRACT
On 9 June 1990 the Cree politician and band chief Elijah Harper held an eagle feather in his hand and said the single word ‘no’. His refusal of what was known as the Meech Lake Accord – a series of proposed amendments to the Constitution of Canada that on the one hand attempted to recognize the province of Quebec as a ‘distinct society’, and on the other hand failed to guarantee the same for Canada’s Aboriginal peoples – can be regarded as a symbolic ‘post-colonial moment’ in Canadian history. In effect it challenged the view that France and Great Britain are Canada’s ‘founding nations’, for from a First Nations (Native Canadian) perspective the country has fifty-eight founding nations, not just two (see Dickason 2002: x).
