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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 unsuccessfully tries to assert her Jay Treaty rights in the aftermath of the intensified border militarization following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. While the USCanadian 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. + 283 *
