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Mr. Harper, as the story goes, was uncomfortably silent.

But cry as they might — make great overtures as they did — Mr. Chrétien and Mr. Martin inspired little change and likely feel a sour sense of unfinished business, Mr. Helgason said. He does not believe Mr. Harper’s action on the First Nations file has been particularly earth-shattering, but he concedes it has been respectably practical and pragmatic.

It has also been void of the malevolent surprises that many likely expected of a Conservative bogeyman.

“Sometimes the people you underestimate the most, perform the best,” Mr. Helgason said. “So we’ll see.”

In his tenure as prime minister, Mr. Harper has had many First Nations firsts, many of which were available to — but never acted on — by those who came before him: He was the first prime minister to stand up in the House of Commons and apologize for the Indian Residential Schools system. He was the first to endorse the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He was the first to extend the Canadian Human Rights Act to aboriginals living on reserves. He was the first to appoint an Innu Cabinet minister, and the first to have two aboriginal ministers in Cabinet at the same time. And he was the first sitting prime minister to be named an honourary chief.

That Mr. Harper was this summer named Chief Speaker of Alberta’s Blood Tribe, clad in smeared yellow face-paint and a feathered headdress, is no accident. Rather it is the result of a strategic, reasoned approach to First Nations policy born not just from his own training and convictions, but also from the lessons inadvertently taught by those who came before him.