But even if one ignores the fact that tens of thousands of victims of Canada's apartheid -- Phil Fontaine among them -- are very much alive, this argument falls apart under the most casual inspection. A brief survey of the ways in which we continue to marginalize First Nations in 2009 would include the fact that reserves are given half as much money for education per capita as the rest of Canadians receive; about 100 reserves country-wide lack access to clean drinking water; people on reserves are not allowed to own the homes they live in, and thus are unable to leverage their assets like the rest of us; of the tens of billions of dollars earned in taxes from resource extraction industries and spent on Canadians regardless of where they live (so long as it isn't a reserve), First Nations receive not a cent. Could all this, one wonders, have something to do with Canada's refusal to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples?

Inspired by Obama

Such facts were no secret to the thousands who came to Calgary to witness the election of their new national chief. The question is what to do about it.

"They're talking about all this poverty, and yet here they are spending a million dollars on booze and posh hotels," said Rachel Wuttunee, a 28-year-old of mixed descent with a BA in First Nations studies from Vancouver Island University. "Why couldn't they do something more in line with aboriginal tradition, like hold the assembly in a natural setting away from the city?" Wuttunee saw this as an example of the huge generational rift between the 50 per cent of First Nations who are under 25 and the elders at their helm. But in a later conversation, she allowed that accepting sponsorship had its merits. "It's great that all these people are getting to do and see things here they've never done before. And at the same time, people who live in the city are embraced with our culture."

Atleo, who is hereditary chief of Vancouver Island's Ahousaht First Nation, seemed to me to demonstrate a fine understanding of the nuanced issues he'll be grappling with for at least the next three years. While his campaign centered above all on the need for education to lift First Nations out of poverty -- and help the rest of us understand the Third World in which so many of them live -- he's no less intent on building partnerships with industry or getting Ottawa to honour its treaty obligations.

A few hours after his swearing-in ceremony, tired but triumphant, Atleo spoke to a small crowd at a reception in the Hyatt. He'd sounded a little wooden during the campaign speech but now seemed more at ease, no longer resorting to notes and eliciting a wider range of emotion than before. He described visiting Washington to watch Obama's inauguration and reflected that "we are at a moment in history where we can see change around us that we can grasp and harness." Aside from some obvious changes he'd like to see in Ottawa, he also urged his own people to overcome the divisions that have made them all too easy to exploit over the past few centuries. "There's going to be tremendous potential for our peoples if we can coalesce from coast to coast," he said. His message to Ottawa was a blend of challenge and promise: "We must realize that prosperity for First Nations will mean prosperity for all Canada."

By then he'd changed out of the traditional vest he'd been wearing all week, and into a casual dinner jacket. You couldn't tell by looking that he was anything but Canadian.