Idle No More: Where is the movement 2 years later?

I grew up in the age of the standoffs.

For allof my formative 1990s when I came into consciousness as an Anishinaabe and indigenous person I witnessed communities putting their lives on the line against armed Canadians at Oka, Burnt Church, Gustfasen Lake, Ipperwash and countless other places.

• ANALYSIS: Idle No More prepares for day of action
• Idle No More protests held across Canada

The prospect of a peaceful future including Indigenous communities and Canada seemed bleak.

That is, until Nov.2012, when a group of women in Saskatchewan held the first community teach-in about proposed omnibus federal legislation removing protection for water and proposing a sham process to lease First Nations territory all in the interests of the Northern Gateway pipeline project.

They used the hashtag #idlenomore to help publicize the issue.

• Timeline: Idle No More
• Visit CBC Aboriginal for more top stories

Their brave event a mere blip on my Facebook page turned into a campaign asking chiefs attending a National Assembly of First Nations meeting on Dec.3 to go to Parliament and demand the bills removal. They did.

On Dec.10 a national day of action was organized. On Dec.17 a flash mob round dance at the Cornwall Centre shopping mall in Regina attracted thousands of people in a messy, unevenbut inspiring scene anda YouTube videoabout it wentviral that night.

I watched that video with my daughter and saw, for the first time in my life, a future path for this country.

Idle No More was the largest Canada-wide social action movement since thecivil rights movement of the 1960s.

For six months Nov. 2012 toApril 2013 theentire country was invited to an actual dialogue about how to be a good neighbourand family member, and what it means to be a country where indigenous peopleshave always led, always taughtand always gifted newcomers a future.

Its two years later. Where is Idle No More now? Or, the question I get often: What was the point of the Idle No More movement? Did Canada change at all?

There is wideresistance to change, louder calls of why cant you people just get over it, and a baffling prime ministerial pronouncement that nearly 1200 murdered and missing indigenous women do not showevidence of a sociological phenomenonwhile virtually every premier in the country says thats wrong.

While the round dances in malls and marches have subsided, the hunger fasts on Victoria Island have endedand the calls for resistance to fast-tracked omnibus legislation has quieted, there is more collective action led by indigenous grassroots peoples throughout Canada than ever before.

Last August, the vigil to honour Tina Fontaine and Faron Hall,which saw2000 Winnipeggers walking through the streets, was organized in four hours by people who had met during Idle No More.

The media has changed. Reporters cannot responsibly choose Ikea monkeys over indigenous peoples anymore. Canadian intellectuals and politicians like John Ralston Saul, Naomi Kleinand former prime minister Paul Martin are now building careers off of the lessons they learn from indigenous peoples when writing their books and building their foundations.

Everyday Canadians are calling for treaty education, information about residential schoolsand then asking why have I never been taught that this is my history?

They are learning, often for the first time, what it means to be Canadian.

Idle No More is not a perfect movement,but name one that is. It cannot be disputedthough that the direction of Canada was profoundly changed as a result of itand there is more to come.

While force is still a real possibility, Idle No More proved that Canada may be ready for another path too.

Happy secondanniversary Idle No More.Lets continue to dance.

Niigaan Sinclair is an associate professor at the University of Manitoba, and one of the editors of The Winter We Danced: Voices from the Past, the Future, and the Idle No More movement.