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me into their country, recognizing me as a Western Shoshone national."?§
Likewise, in his short story “Patriot Act” (2008), the Onondaga writer and artist
Eric Gansworth reflects on the great symbolism tribal cards carry. The story’s
narrator recounts that his wife who is a member of the Tuscarora Nation
“stared at the card that had meant so much to her. All of her family members
carried them, and admired one another’s, like strange baseball cards, in ways
that I never see people showing passports off. Sometimes, they told each other
stories about stopping border guards cold with their treaty rights.”* Identity
documents are clearly a highly important identity marker in the 21“ century.
There is great inconsistency among nations around the world regarding
the recognition of tribal passports, which causes problems for Indigenous
travelers. In the 1920s, as an act of resistance, Chief Deskaheh crossed the
Atlantic with his Haudenosaunee passport but was not admitted back to
Canada and died in the US. Almost a century later in 2010, the Iroquois
National Lacrosse Team was refused entry to a tournament in the UK with
their Haudenosaunee passports despite having used them without problems
at other times. Volpp points out the irony of the whole affair by reminding us
that the Iroquois’ government is one of the oldest democratic governments in
the world and lacrosse is an American Indian invention.“ In the same year, the
Kahnawa:ke Mohawk delegation was also unable to use their Haudenosaunee
passports on their return to Canada from a conference in Bolivia." This
inconsistency is a grave offence and yet again demonstrates how Indigenous
sovereign status is constantly questioned.
The Indigenous protagonist in Gansworth’s short story faces a similar
situation on the US-Canadian border when she tries to assert her Jay Treaty
rights but is silenced by the border agent who declares that, “You might
think this little red card from your purse means something, [...] but it
really doesn’t,” shattering her Indigenous identity and denying her nation’s
sovereignty.” While many Indigenous people today possess both tribal as
well as Canadian or American IDs, some tribal members residing in remote
northern areas lack these official documents. The Gwich’in tribe whose
territory extends over what is known as Alaska, Yukon, and Northwest
Territories repeatedly runs into problems when organizing larger gatherings
and meetings on the Canadian side of the border where elders without US
passports are denied access. As Boos et al. assert, US-born Gwich’in members
38 Quoted in Starks - McCormack — Cornell, Native Nations, 55.
% Eric Gansworth, Patriot Act, Eric Gansworth, Vol. 14 (2018), https://d2d80fee-b640-4c18¬
b979-5cae56385a28.filesusr.com/ugd/8e6c16_263e0f26f3954c6fa8fa6861a210626d.pdf
(accessed 3 April 2020).
10 Volpp, The Indigenous As Alien, 314.
“Stirrup — Clarke, Straddling Boundaries, 6.
12 Gansworth, Patriot Act, 13-14.
* 276 +