CALGARY - Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, hereditary chief of Vancouver Island’s Ahousaht First Nation, has been declared the new national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

The election process took almost 24 hours and went through a record eight rounds of voting that didn’t finish until shortly before eight this morning.

It was a two-man race from the outset. Bill Wilson and Terrance Nelson were eliminated in the first round, while John Beaucage, who placed a distant third, withdrew from the race and gave his support to Perry Bellegarde.

A candidate needs 60% of the vote to win, a rule that some in the AFN are no doubt considering revising after watching five straight rounds of voting yield virtually identical results. The two contenders stayed within four votes of each other from ballots two through four, only to draw exactly even in the fifth round.

After that it became a war of attrition. Of the 552 chiefs who cast votes at the start, only 454 remained by the end, a fact that may have influenced the outcome as much as Atleo’s formidable contingent of BC supporters.

Accounting for one third of the electorate, these were untouchable amid the ceaseless hunt for swing votes that sent teams of each candidate’s campaign team scurrying through the patios and bars surrounding the downtown convention center.

In contrast to their ultra-visible politicking, Atleo and Bellegarde carried out personal petitions behind closed doors and only emerged to hear the results of each ballot.

People started worrying around four in the morning. There is no mechanism in the AFN’s constitution to resolve an intractable election dispute, after all, and both men were young, ambitious, and confident – hardly the type to give in.

The feeling of a collective head being butted against the wall was only reinforced when Terrance Nelson embraced Bellegarde after the sixth round and told him “don’t give up on us, Perry. We need you.”

Elsewhere, Rick Simon, the regional chief of Nova Scotia/Newfoundland, found himself beside Phil Fontaine, who at that point was still the national chief; “I think it’s time to intervene,” Simon said, to which Fontaine quietly replied, “I don’t think so. That would be very damaging.”

Perhaps he meant that this struggle had become as much about the AFN’s ability to work out its own kinks as about who would lead it next. Ultimately Bellegarde would say as much himself; after watching Atleo pull 14, then 34, then 76 votes ahead to 58% of the total, Bellegarde took the stage for a gracious concession:

“I know it’s not quite sixty, but the mandate is there,” he said. “This was a testament to our commitment to our processes.”

For his part, Atleo began his victory speech by asking the audience to give Bellegarde a standing ovation, and closed it by soliciting another one for Phil Fontaine.

Along the way, he reminded everyone that “this has been nowhere near as difficult as it is for our people on a daily basis...our people have overcome so much, yet our culture and our world views are still being challenged as much as they were in the 1500s, when the powers of Europe were having a debate about whether we were human or not.”

The change of leadership is effective immediately. So long Mr. Fontaine. Hello, A-in-chut.

Freelance journalist Arno Kopecky is blogging the AFN General Assembly for The Tyee.