Roseau River Chief Terry Nelson, the man behind the planned railway blockade in southern Manitoba, has been called a renegade, a radical and a lone wolf. The labels don’t bother him. He sees himself as an honest man in a world of diplomatic double-speak, straining to hold back a groundswell of anger from the grassroots.
“There’s only one way to deal with a white man. You either pick up a gun or you stand between him and his money,” Chief Nelson said yesterday
“Where I differ from Phil Fontaine and Ovide [Mercredi], they’re talking about the poor Indians in Canada. Who gives a shit? I know goddamn well that nobody gives a shit … What they care about is that I’m going to sit on the railway track for 24 hours.”
“If this thing gets out of control, it’s pretty clear we can shave $200-billion off the GDP of Canada, and it won’t recover until 2009.”