Premier Dalton McGuinty has been touting it.
Dozens of media biographies reference it.
But Ontario Aboriginal Affairs Minister Michael Bryant declines to talk about it at all.
The topic is Bryant's Harvard Law School thesis on conflicts between indigenous people and the state. Submitted in 1994 as part of his candidacy for an LLM, as the American degree is called, it covers what legal approaches are open to the state in aboriginal conflicts.
"The past, present and future of indigenous-State relations in North America includes an ugly chapter involving indigenous peoples' declarations of war, State deployment of police and military troops, and the horror of armed conflicts," the paper begins.
Noting that North America has a "long and perhaps sensational history" of armed conflicts between indigenous people and the state, Bryant writes that "their reoccurrence remains a distinct possibility today."
It was May 1994. He was 28. The Mike Harris Conservatives would not take over from Bob Rae's NDP government for a year.
And it would not be until September 1995 that the OPP shooting of protester Dudley George at Ipperwash would send aboriginal issues to the top of the agenda.
Since he appointed Bryant to the complex aboriginal portfolio last fall, McGuinty has taken to promoting Bryant's thesis as proof of his new cabinet minister's capabilities. Asked at a recent editorial board with The Spectator how he sees Caledonia resolving, McGuinty described how the province will use recommendations from the Ipperwash Inquiry as a guide in the Six Nations confrontation.
Then he segued into: "And I've got a great minister. In fact -- I didn't know this until after I appointed him -- he, at Harvard, did his thesis on aboriginal issues."
True enough. But does a 130-page research paper done when a politician-to-be is in his 20s factor that large when he is in his 40s?
Does the thesis portend an attitude, or predict how Bryant may direct Ontario's approach to the Six Nations conflict, which has now dragged on two years?
In the United States, early writings, even memos, often are examined as part of American political confirmation hearings for jurists and the cabinet.
Larry Kramer, dean of Stanford Law School in California, says it is indeed sometimes possible to look at a grad paper and "see the seeds" of a person's future approach.
"But usually only with hindsight," Kramer said in an interview.
"People grow up and they get experience and they change their views in all sorts of ways."
University of Toronto's Curtis Cole says a classic example is prime minister Mackenzie King, whose Harvard doctorate in political economy spawned King's early thinking on issues such as the right to collective bargaining.
"I think it's perfectly OK to look at what is someone saying as a scholar and how does that compare to what he does later in life," says Cole, a commentator on law and history. "Pretty much anybody would be motivated to some extent by what's in their thesis."
Bryant's office informed The Spectator by e-mail that he declined an interview. It said anyone with a library card can get the thesis and read it for themselves.
Bryant has described indigenous issues as "close to my heart."