A year and three weeks ago, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was in Ottawa, meeting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the wake of the lethal attack by Israeli commandoes on the international Freedom Flotilla.

The Ottawa Palestine Solidarity Network had already planned a protest of Netanyahu's arrival -- but the murder of nine activists and the injury of dozens more aboard the 2010 flotilla, while Harper glad-handed with the man responsible, transformed a protest against Netanyahu and Israel's war crimes and occupation into something more.

At the time, we could feel it in the Ottawa streets that this moment was an important turning point. Indeed, from coast to coast, many were beginning to have the same idea.

An open letter:

There is an unwritten rule that Aboriginal people in Canada should not take our grievances with Canada outside of national borders. Most of us have grown up to respect the principle of "keeping it in the family," so to speak. Voluntarily agreeing to not think and act internationally creates boundaries that restrict our own understanding of colonialism and the political mechanics that continue to undermine Aboriginal self-determination. Ignoring the suffering that colonialism brings to others will only prolong our own.