When I used to cross this border regularly in the seventies, I believed in the foolishness of such boundaries. People are people, humans are humans, and the nation-state will soon fade away as world government becomes a reality. Cultures, I thought, would, and should, endure. Meanwhile, the nations of the world should unite in a new universal system of justice and governance. In the eighties and nineties, I was a little less naive, but I still believed that the global risk of nuclear war and of what we now call ‘climate change’ would bring the world together. I don’t have much to say about all that now, though I know what I think.

Of course, for many thousands of years this borderland was densely occupied by well governed, prosperous, and culturally sophisticated tribes living along the banks of the great river we now call the St. Lawrence. Loosely formed tribal boundaries existed and were carefully observed, although formal alliances were common, trade routes covered the two continents, and hunting territories were often shared.

“For the Iroquois tribes who lived along the St. Lawrence Seaway, the establishment of a border between the United States and Canada was a particularly sensitive issue: were they citizens of both countries, or of neither? Each July, members of the Indian Defense League of America march across this bridge on the border to commemorate an important victory. The Indian Defense League was founded in 1926 by Chief Clinton Rickard, a Tuscarora. In 1928, the league, based primarily within the Six Iroquois Nations of New York and Canada, established unrestricted rights for Indians to trade and travel across the U.S./Canadian border. The league argued that these rights were already guaranteed by the Jay Treaty of 1794 and the Treaty of Ghent in 1814. But it was not until 1969 that the Canadian government recognized these rights and allowed Indians to exchange goods across the border duty-free. ” (http://tuscaroras.com/pages/borderE.html)

The U.S./Mexican border is far more problematic for native peoples, such as the Yuma, Apache, Yaqui, Pima, and Kickapoo. These tribes have a website that details the enormous hardships this border has created, especially since the eighties when the U.S. became so distressingly paranoid and irrational in its militaristic attempts to simply close down the border. For a useful, objective (read non-hysterical) account, check out: http://indigenouspeoplesandtheborder.wikispaces.com/ One of the Pima tribes, the Tohono O’odham have 25,000 living in southern Arizona and also several thousand more in northern Sonora, Mexico.

“Unlike aboriginal groups along the U.S.-Canada border, the Tohono O’odham were not given dual citizenship when a border was drawn across their lands in 1853 by the Gadsden Purchase. Even so, members of the nation moved freely across the current international boundary for decades – with the blessing of the U.S. government – to work, participate in religious ceremonies, keep medical appointments in Sells, and visit relatives. Even today, many tribal members make an annual pilgrimage to Magdalena, Sonora, during St. Francis festivities. …

Since the mid-1980s, however, stricter border enforcement has restricted this movement, and tribal members born in Mexico or who have insufficient documentation to prove U.S. birth or residency, have found themselves trapped in a remote corner of Mexico, with no access to the tribal centers only tens of miles away. Since 2001, bills have repeatedly been introduced in Congress to solve the “one people-two country” problem by granting U.S. citizenship to all enrolled members of the Tohono O’odham, but have so far been unsuccessful. Reasons that have been advanced in opposition to granting U.S. citizenship to all enrolled members of the Nation include the fact that, for a large part, births on the reservation have been informally recorded and the records are susceptible to easy alteration or falsification.

The proximity of the U.S.-Mexico border incurs further costs to the tribal government and breeds many social problems.

Many of the thousands of people crossing the Sonoran desert to work in U.S. agriculture or to smuggle controlled substances seek emergency assistance from the Tohono O’odham police when they become dehydrated or get stranded. On the ground, border patrol emergency rescue and tribal EMTs coordinate and communicate. The tribe and the state of Arizona pay a large proportion of the bills for border-related law enforcement and emergency services.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tohono_O%27odham#Border_issues)