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JAY TREATY: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS OF FREE CROSS-BORDER PASSAGE...
CONCLUSION
“T am a member of the Tuscarora Nation, and by the Jay Treaty, you
have no right to detain me” ... “You can have your yearly treaty parades,
but since September Eleventh, we live in a world full of evil-doers. Your
days of crossing unobstructed are over. Do you understand?” ... “You’re
just lucky we didn’t have tracking devices for dangerous characters
when your sorry asses arrived from Europe. Evil-doers got here long
before September Eleventh.”
Eric Gansworth’s “Patriot Act”®
In Eric Gansworth’s “Patriot Act,” Indigenous character Virginia unsuccess¬
fully tries to assert her Jay Treaty rights in the aftermath of the intensified
border militarization following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. While the US¬
Canadian boundary was commonly referred to as the “longest undefended
border in the world” prior to the attacks and believed to have a merely
symbolic purpose, this paper has shown that the border has always been a
very real obstruction for Indigenous peoples. Even though the Jay Treaty
of 1794 officially declared the border non-existent for Indigenous people
and guaranteed them unobstructed passage, both Canada and the US have
modified, reinterpreted, and ignored the treaty rights as they pleased. The
divergent colonizing conditions in each country, as manifested here on the
example of the Coast Salish peoples’ differing schooling experiences, have left
their mark and caused division between the same peoples on opposite sides
of the border. As histories of whole generations differ and some Indigenous
nations have been renamed to manifest the growing differences between their
divided peoples (Blackfeet to Bloods in Canada), effects of the supposedly
invisible boundary remain very visible.
Needless to say, this divisiveness is caused not only by different
discriminatory policies but also by the current discrepancies between
the rights guaranteed to Indigenous peoples in each country. The ongoing
incongruity is a constant reminder of Indigenous peoples’ inferior status in
the nation-states that fail to recognize Indigenous nations’ sovereignty and
inherent rights as the first peoples of the continent. Most First Nations in
Canada thus view the recognition of the free cross-border passage rights as
stated in the Jay Treaty as an essential next step to reconciliation, a notion
confirmed in the Minister’s Special Representative Fred Caron’s report.
Caron concludes that although “it is not considered the source of their
inherent rights, the Jay Treaty has nonetheless become a powerful symbol of
65 Gansworth, Patriot Act, 13-15.
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