In their own words...

"AFN rivals embody competing visions: moderate Fontaine, revolutionary Mercredi take different approaches to struggle for native sovereignty" ..."Mr. Mercredi wants a political revolution in which natives will become sovereign rulers of their own affairs...Mr. Fontaine will take what he can get when he can get it."

"In Gustafsen Lake last year, no university students were there, no college students, no leaders. There was no one there who had a job or a future. Gustafsen was Native people who had given up on the system or had seen the system give up on them. They were a group of people frustrated to the point where they had no loyalty to anyone, no loyalties even to their own people."

Title of article: "Weary Mercredi would like to represent Canada abroad"
"'Look at my face.' There are tiny lines around Ovide Mercredi's dark eyes and deeper ones across his forehead. Worn down from trying to improve the lot of Canada's aboriginal people, under attack from some of them, Mercredi says he won't run for a third term as national chief. But he does have a second career in mind. 'I'd like to be an ambassador somewhere,' he says, 'somewhere like Australia or New Zealand where they speak English'"

"Some of our people are not very nice"

"They're a group trying to make a name for themselves."