It is given to some of us to be, effectively, the drivers of a paradigm shift that is barely visible to most of the rest. And it is mostly discernible after the fact, because paradigm shifts tend to be controversial as the old and the new collide.

Tom Berger was one of those paradigm shifters, catching and surfing a wave that may have seemed more like a ripple when it began in the early 1970s as Dene began to meet together and share stories. Some of the story sharers were people who had been young when Treaty 11 – the last of the Canadian government’s treaties with First Nations – was signed in the North in 1921. And they talked about what was understood, not just the English words on a paper.