The aboriginal day of protest did what it was supposed to do.

No, it didn’t grind the country to a halt. There was no apocalypse.

Protests didn’t derail the national economy. The Alberta oilsands continued to produce bitumen. In spite of some border-crossing slowdowns, most truckers trucked and most workers worked.

Some First Nations said their members were too busy on a Wednesday to take time off to protest. Others blocked the usual highways and rail lines.

As this column went to press, things were pretty peaceful. And why not?

But demonstrations usually have three aims. This one succeeded in all three.

The first aim of any protest is to jive the mass media. Social media is fine as far it goes, but who has the time to sift through Twitter all day?

It’s far more efficient to get the mass media rolling. And aboriginal protesters, from Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence to self-appointed Idle No More spokesperson and Ryerson University professor Pam Palmater did this brilliantly.

Even before Wednesday, many Canadians who hadn’t been paying attention to any of this began to understand that aboriginals have grievances around the federal Conservative government’s latest budget.

Specifically, many aboriginals oppose unilateral changes to the Indian Act that would allow willing First Nations to declare portions of their reserves private property.

As well, there is considerable native opposition to the government’s decision — again unilateral — to weaken environmental laws around lakes and rivers.

In a perfect world, we all would have known that First Nations didn’t like either the measures themselves or the unilateral way in which they had been decided. But until mass media journalists (some of whom do have time to monitor Twitter all day) reported on all the hoo-hah around flash mobs and hunger strikes, most of us didn’t.

Score one for the protesters.

The second object of any protest is to show your opponent — in this case Prime Minister Stephen Harper — that you are a force to be reckoned with.

Here, too, the protesters succeeded, even before Wednesday.

The prime minister was forced to host a meeting that he did not want with First Nations leaders who he did not wish to see. He was forced to back away from his original decision to keep Governor-General David Johnston out of the mix (the final compromise was to have Johnston host a reception where he treated the Assembly of First Nations leadership to canapés).

Most important, Harper has been forced to address an issue — native rights — in which he is profoundly uninterested.

Yet at the same time, by pushing for even more than Harper has been willing to grant, the protesters are keeping the pressure on.

Some suggest that demonstrators have undercut the AFN, which purports to speak for Canada’s status Indians. In fact, the reverse is true.

By threatening to outflank the AFN leadership, the so-called radicals have put it in a stronger position, one where it is able to say to Ottawa, “We’d like to be more reasonable but politically we can’t”.

Score two for the protesters.

The third and most important object of any protest, however, is to mobilize your own supporters. Those who fret that Wednesday’s actions will alienate mainstream Canadians miss that point.

The real aim of this protest is to encourage aboriginals across the country to agitate for their own common cause. We shall see how well that succeeds. Aboriginal politics, like just about everything else in Canada, is complex and subtle.

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My guess, though, is that Wednesday’s actions will produce a limited but definite success.

It is a long haul. No one knows that better than aboriginal people themselves. This is just one small step.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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