It certainly looks that way. Despite Monday’s “day of action,” the grassroots First Nations campaign appears to be concluding with a whimper, not a bang. Polls suggest that, for many Canadians, Idle No More is far less important than it once was.

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence ended her hunger strike, narrowly avoiding being removed from her post from her own band’s council. Meanwhile, the intense media focus — along with the public’s interest — has waned. Not as much is being said or written about Idle No More anymore.

Just a few weeks ago, discussion and debate about Idle No More was everywhere. The grassroots First Nations campaign had captured everyone’s attention.

In public relations terms, its achievements were extraordinary. With an unlimited budget, and some clever PR, it isn’t so difficult to attract attention. Anyone can do that (ask the Kardashians or Paris Hilton).

What is remarkable instead is the campaign reached millions of people organically — with no money, no strategic plan and no Madison Ave. ad agency to dream up catchy tag lines. Idle No More did that.

In 2011, the Occupy movement was like that, too. It had no budget, no leadership and no one to offer up sound bites to an impatient news media. Despite that, Occupy caused a sensation around the globe, drawing the support of millions upon millions. And then it disappeared as quickly as it came.

It’s not an entirely recent phenomenon. Throughout history, there have been other examples of people or ideas that have captivated the world without the use of force or treasure.

Christianity, for example, had undeniably inauspicious beginnings. An itinerant rabbi and a few poverty-stricken supporters walking the countryside, preaching a peaceful philosophy that would sweep the planet. No budget, no public relations team, no nothing. Just an idea.

Where did Chief Spence and Idle No More get off track? How did a movement that showed such promise lose so much momentum? Three reasons.

One, if you have a compelling message — and Idle No More inarguably did — stick to it. Have one “ask,” not 100. Idle No More lost the public because, after a while, no one could figure what it was about anymore.

Two, have a single spokesman saying one thing — not a disputatious chorus, all clamouring for time before the TV cameras and thereby creating communications chaos. At the start, Chief Spence was the face of the movement. Eventually, every other First Nations leader seemed to be trying to get in on the action, creating confusion about who led Idle No More, and what it hoped to achieve.

Thirdly and finally, don’t alienate the folks holding the microphones and notepads. The moment Chief Spence and her allies started to physically bar — or eject — reporters asking unwelcome questions, they were doomed. At the start, their main allies were the media. When Chief Spence lost them, she lost the larger war.

Idle No More could have secured positive change — and may still. A few short weeks after it began, however, it has been hurt by too many messages, too many spokesmen and a grave miscalculation about the media.

For First Nations willing to pay heed, Idle No More offers lessons about how to do things.

He describes Gomery as a judge who toiled in relative obscurity throughout most of his career only to get caught up in the limelight. He slams him for the statements he made to media outside the hearing room regarding former prime minister Jean Chretien – something Gomery was publicly chastised for in Federal Court.

“(Public inquiries) become too political. And they make people even more cynical about democratic institutions. They become these self-mandating, self-financing monstrosities that political people can’t limit,” he says.

By the time this newspaper hits the streets, Ontario will have a new premier-elect, and it’ll represent a big, big change.

The chances are pretty good that the premier-to-be will be a woman for the first time in Ontario’s history.

One of the women is a proud Italian-Canadian, and would be the first premier to come from outside the white, Anglo-Saxon compact that has occupied the office of the premier since Confederation.

Meanwhile, the other frontrunner in the now-concluded Ontario Liberal leadership race was a gay woman.

That, too, represents a pretty big change from the way things have been done in our past.

Women now dominate our provincial politics, with female premiers leading B.C., Alberta, Quebec and Newfoundland.

From the elevated heights of the federal cabinet, right down to the most modest municipal council, there have also been other weighty changes.

More women occupying positions of power. Openly gay leaders found everywhere. Visible minorities winning elections in places no one would have thought possible, just a few years ago.

Elsewhere, of course, the most dramatic example of political change is the young black man who won the U.S. presidency in 2008 — and who, older and grayer, won a big second mandate in 2012.

Who would have imagined, just a few years ago, that a black man with a funny-sounding name could ever become the most powerful person on Earth?

Not our parents. Certainly not our grandparents. They would have laughed, and shaken their heads.

It’s not just the people who are changing, of course. In policy terms, things have happened that none of us ever expected, even in our wildest dreams.

Gay marriage, once condemned by the likes of Stephen Harper, is now the law of the land, and most citizens couldn’t care less.

On the policy front, our prime minister himself embodies this sea change.

Once a proud social conservative — on gay rights, on abortion, on bilingualism — Harper has changed, too. He has refused to reopen the gay marriage debate, he has actively opposed attempts to recriminalize abortion, and he opens every speech he gives with excellent French.

Meanwhile, Harper — the man who once wrote that he would fight any policy that was “designed to radically or suddenly alter the ethnic makeup of Canada” — now presides over the most ethnically diverse caucus in his party’s history.

Political change, however much some may oppose it, is inevitable. It cannot be stopped.

Conservatives, being conservatives, often profess to be opposed to change.

In my new book, Fight The Right, I recall the axiom of the conservative deity, William F. Buckley.

Buckley — the conservative primus inter pares, and the founder of the Right’s house organ, The National Review — did not once dispute the suggestion that conservatives detest change. In fact, he proudly admitted it.

Conservatives, wrote Buckley, “stand athwart history, yelling stop.”

It’s a wonderful bit of imagery and writing — but the fact is that history cannot be stopped. Slowed down, perhaps. Delayed, like a traveller who misses a flight connection. But political change is mostly inexorable, and is happening all around us, all the time. It gets to where it is going.

The tendency to resist change — and to hold on to what is comfortable and familiar — is entirely human, and therefore entirely forgivable.

But political change, mostly, does not wait for us. And it seldom casts a glance in the rearview mirror.

Ask Calgary’s first Muslim mayor. Ask the woman who is now going to be premier of our largest province. Ask the gay men who dominate in the Prime Minister’s Office and his cabinet.

They’ll tell you: Change is upon us, and change is not so bad at all.