Canada–United States border

• On March 29, two families of four died while attempting to cross the St. Lawrence River from Canada to the U.S. Their bodies were found in Akwesasne Mohawk territory which straddles the Canada-United States border.
• Media coverage quickly began to frame the fatal incident as an issue of illegal human smuggling.
• But perhaps the most glaring omission in media coverage is any meaningful reflection on what it means for this tragedy to occur on Indigenous territory.

Indigenous communities and the border

• The Akwesasne tragedy must be understood in the context of colonial history and the imposition of the U.S.-Canada border on Indigenous nations.
• The 1794 Jay’s Treaty codified the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples to move freely across the border and to carry out trade and commerce.
• Instead, Indigenous Peoples were made foreigners in their own land with mobility and land rights inferior to those of European settler migrants.
• As Historian Benjamin Hoy writes, “[f]rom the very outset, Canada and the United States believed that building a national border on Indigenous lands required erasing pre-existing territorial boundaries.”

Colonial dispossession

• Canadian immigration law has historically served as a key mechanism of colonial dispossession.
• It did this by actively encouraging white European settlers to come to Canada by granting them protections and rights.

Undermining Indigenous self-determination

• Canada has continued to assert unilateral sovereignty in immigration while simultaneously erasing diverse Indigenous laws and customs.
• Sister Juliana claimed asylum in Canada, saying that she would face persecution if she returned to Nigeria.
• A key part of the truth and reconciliation process is for settlers to acknowledge treaty relationships with Indigenous communities and their treaty rights to be on this land.
• One of the first steps is to acknowledge and respect Indigenous sovereignty, laws and treaty relations when it comes to immigration.