Elijah Harper

It was 12 June 1990, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

First Nations chiefs were marching toward the Legislative Building. Security guards tried to stop them. There were scuffles.

The chiefs got through anyway. They made their way to the gallery.

In the chamber, an Oji-Cree member of the legislature held an eagle feather. His name was Elijah Harper. And he said: "No."

The Meech Lake Accord was a set of amendments to the Constitution. It was meant to keep Quebec within Canada.

To pass, it needed unanimous approval from Parliament and all ten provinces. In Manitoba, the vote was expected to go through easily.

But Indigenous leaders opposed it. The accord, they said, ignored their rights and their place in the country.

And the legislature's rules required unanimous consent to debate it in time. A single "no" was enough to stop everything.

Between 12 and 21 June, Elijah Harper said "no" eight times. Always with the eagle feather in his hand.

Before that, Phil Fontaine, Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, had called Harper. The two men had met for over an hour, at the Charter House hotel in Winnipeg.

Harper feared for his career. Fontaine urged him to focus on this big issue.

Elijah Harper was born on 3 March 1949, in Red Sucker Lake, a reserve in northern Manitoba.

As a child, he was sent to residential schools, at Norway House, at Brandon, at Birtle. Later, he studied at the University of Manitoba, in 1971 and 1972.

In 1978, his people elected him chief of the Red Sucker Lake band.

In 1981, he became the New Democratic member for Rupertsland in the Manitoba legislature. On 17 April 1986, he became a minister without portfolio, responsible for Native Affairs.

In 1990, he was the only Indigenous member of the legislature.

He explained his gesture this way:

Manitoba could not vote in time. Newfoundland followed. Its premier, Clyde Wells, cancelled the planned vote. The accord failed.

For Phil Fontaine, it was a powerful moment for First Nations. "We came to the realization very quickly that our voice mattered," he said.

Elijah Harper kept going. In 1993, he was elected to Parliament for Churchill, as a Liberal. In 1999, he became a commissioner of the Indian Claims Commission.

He died in Ottawa on 17 May 2013, at sixty-four.

Elijah Harper was Oji-Cree. He said his "no" while the First Nations chiefs were there, in the gallery. That way of speaking alongside his own people echoes Ubuntu, without being the same thing.

People remember a very short word. The shortest of all.

And an eagle feather, held in a chamber where decisions had so long been made without First Nations.