A surprise attack on the nation’s military bases and power stations sends the Armed Forces scrambling.

When impoverished, disheartened, poorly educated, but well-armed aboriginal young people find a modern revolutionary leader, they rally with a battle cry of "Take Back the Land!" Theirs is a fight to right the wrongs inflicted on them by "the white settlers."
They know they are too small to take on the entire country, but they don’t need to. Over a few tension-filled days as the battles rages over abundant energy resources, the frantic prime minister can only watch as the insurrection paralyzes the country. But when energy-dependent Americans discover the southward flow of Canadian hydroelectricity, oil, and natural gas is halted, they do not remain passive.
Although none of the country’s leaders see it coming, the shattering consequences unfold with the same plausible harmony by which quiet aboriginal protests decades ago became the eerie premonitions of today’s stand-offs and "days of action."

 

Douglas L. Bland served for 30 years as a senior officer in the Canadian Armed Forces and held the chair of defence studies at Queen’s University for 15 years. He is the author of six books and numerous published contributions on Canadian and international security affairs. His political novel, Uprising, was published in 2009. He lives in Kingston, Ontario.

Douglas L. Bland's profile page

The sad testimony of Uprising is that the realistic backstory is supported by social statistics.

Indiancountrytoday.com

Dr. Bland skilfully uses the format of a novel to examine Aboriginal and domestic security issues.... Uprising is neither a conspiracy tale nor a slippery slope argument. It is the canary in the mineshaft. With a frustrated, young Aboriginal population with limited chances relative to the broader Canadian population, with current means of addressing historical and current grievances wanting, and with limited Canadian capacity to ensure domestic security, it simply would not take that much to ignite a stronger opposition to the state and its mechanisms. The domestic security situation is more fragile and our means more limited to address threats than Canadians would like to think, and hoping for the best is not enough.

On Task Journal

... the fictional conditions underlying the uprising in the book so mirror the reality of modern Canada.

National Post

We have a right to be frustrated, concerned, angry anger that's building and building.

Phil Fontaine, Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations

Senator ROMEO DALLAIRE: "We have heard about the Aboriginal Day of Action. Is the internal security risk rising as the youth see themselves more and more disenfranchised? In fact, if they ever coalesced. Could they not bring this country to a standstill?"

The Right Honourable PAUL MARTIN: "My answer, and the only one we all have, is we would hope not.

Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, Ottawa, Tuesday, April 8, 2008

A riveting read, the book posits a series of loosely co-ordinated, but crippling, panic-inducing strikes by native guerrillas on Canada's most vulnerable energy and transportation installations.

National Post

It's time to quit being loyal Canadians. We don't need the white man's money. We need a share of our own wealth.

Terrance Nelson, Chief, Roseau River First Nation, Manitoba

Combat-arms' veteran, counter-insurgency expert, counsellor to governments, and leading military scholar-now, Colonel Bland emerges in Uprising as a master thriller-writer who wrenches Canadians from a stale-dated dream world, and answers the inescapable question: what happens in dangerous times when a passive population, narcissistic politicos and uncertain bureaucrats determine the nation's fate? A scintillating read, and devastating warning.

David Harris, Director, International and Terrorist Intelligence Program, INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc.; former Chief of Strategic Planning, Canadian Security Intelligence Service

Hard-hitting and regrettably all too believable.

Jack Granatstein, award-winning military historian, author of Who Killed Canada's Military?