DESERONTO, Ont. - Mohawk protester Shawn Brant has emerged as a lonesome voice of hard-line native militancy, plotting major economic disruption as his way of making Canada sit up and listen.
Whether Friday's national aboriginal day of action will amount to peaceful marches or burning barricades isn't clear. Regardless, Brant says it's just the beginning.
"We're going to have that expression of strength and solidarity across this country,'' he said during an interview at the quarry he occupied on disputed land last March near Deseronto, Ont., west of Kingston.
"Then we'll step back and say: 'You absorb this.' Because the next time we come out, it's going to be harder, it's going to be longer and it's going to have an impact on this economy that Canada can't imagine at this point.
"We've had enough.''
Brant is a solitary figure when it comes to such bravado, a reality he blames on a "campaign of fear'' waged by the federal government.
Elected native leaders who rely on Ottawa for billions of dollars in funding have taken to heart the message that confrontation means fiscal cuts, he says.
His own chief has distanced himself from that in-your-face approach.
Brant says he understands the need to protect already stretched cash for social, housing and education programs.
But he took aim at Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice and what he called the cheap buy-off of his partner in blockade threats, Terry Nelson, chief of Roseau River First Nation in Manitoba.
Nelson backed off plans to block rail lines in his community after Prentice offered him 75 acres toward settling a much larger, long-standing land dispute.
"Seventy-five acres is hardly worth compromising a person's principles,'' Brant said.
Any move Friday to block thousands of commuters on Highway 401 or the CN rail line will depend on last-minute circumstances, police presence and safety issues, Brant says.
OPP Sgt. Kristine Rae hopes the day will be one of peaceful, lawful demonstration.
"But if an incident occurs,'' she said in an interview, "we have contingency plans in place.''
Brant says the safety of women and children is of paramount concern.
Still, he and a tight-knit group of supporters within the Bay of Quinte Mohawks are determined to wreak at least some degree of economic havoc.
"June 29th is the day to start this campaign,'' Brant said. "We're the people that continue to bury our kids and have to put them to bed hungry at night. Yeah, we're absolutely sick of it.
"The only voice that we have is when we start to target those things which disrupt people . . . , that inconvenience people.
"That's the only time we seem to get the ear of government and the rest of the Canadian public to consider our grievances.''
Prentice has taken a hard line of his own, saying blockades are illegal and will be treated accordingly.
He has also said that dragged-out land talks like the ones that drove Brant to take over the quarry are unacceptable. Federal and band negotiators have been wrangling over 370 hectares of rolling countryside for years.
It takes 13 years on average to settle land claims, a woefully flawed process that Prentice hopes to change with new legislation and more cash.
Brant, 43, says it's a sad statement that native people are forced to the extremes of protest.
The slight and soft-spoken father of three wears his hair long under an ever-present battle-fatigue cap. He is a veteran of the most violent and iconic native clashes, from Oka to Ipperwash. He has been known to take over and sometimes trash the offices of politicians, and has done jail time as a result.
Perhaps no one has as much at stake on Friday. Brant is out on bail on charges of mischief, disobeying a court order and breach of recognizance in connection with the 30-hour blockade of the nearby CN rail line April 20.
He is under a specific bail condition that he not participate in unlawful protest.
Canadian National is also suing for related financial losses it has claimed run into the millions of dollars.
Since March, Brant has been living at the quarry in an old school bus that was once converted into a deer-hunting camper. He sleeps in one of four crammed bunk beds, a half-machete slung over one of the posts.
"I'm a target,'' he says matter-of-factly.
When asked what really motivates him, he exhales cigarette smoke and at times fights his emotions. Living in a bus on a quarry for more than 90 days has taken its toll on his family. It has sparked no end of debate within a Mohawk community that is itself divided.
But Brant is clear on his convictions and determined to stay until the province stops "trucking away the very land we're talking about.
"Our babies get sick. They get sores on their bodies from polluted water.''
For years he carried around a newspaper story about a 10-year-old boy in Northern Ontario who left class one day in 1994 and hung himself from a swingset.
Brant says he's asking Canadians to put themselves in the shoes of native people, and to be patient with whatever disruption may come Friday.
"We simply want to provide for our kids a safe, healthy environment -- and optimism for the future.''
