A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada–United States Border across Indigenous Lands

Abstract

This remarkable examination of the border offers an innovative model for looking at the history of borders beyond the “line.” It recenters the story of border creation on Indigenous lands and peoples and demonstrates the complex role the latter played in the construction of the border. This approach will help redefine the very questions historians ask about borders, colonialism, and Indigenous and national histories. Borders, as Benjamin Hoy points out, are never created in isolation but are “drawn on top of a territorial tapestry already established, the new form never vivid enough to block out what came before” (2).Employing the metaphor of a living thing, Hoy traces the development of the Canadian–US border from childhood (1775–1865) to awkward adolescence (1865–1915) and, finally, to adulthood (1915 and beyond). Frequently characterized by unevenness and doubt, it grew in spurts. The book is oriented around three principal arguments. First, this border, unlike the US–Mexican border, has learned to hide its past of conflict and appears to be friendly. The perceived lack of conflict, according to Hoy, was based on American respect for British power (and disdain for its southern frontier). Second, the creation of this border is inseparable from the history of colonialism, dispossession, and Indigenous politics. Its creation involved canceling and erasing earlier Indigenous borders. However, despite lofty visions, local and regional forces exerted their own agenda, and Indigenous agency and labor continued to matter. And third, as a prism drawing on direct and indirect power sources (indirect power set its sights on shaping the motivations rather than physical force and obstacles), the border operated unevenly.There is greater emphasis on the Western Plains, but this book emphasizes the local and regional differences across the continent to highlight variations in border power. Chapter 1 describes the mere “ripples” of border creation where the designs of policy makers relied on local support and unskilled labor. The Civil and Dakota Wars, the subject of chapter 2, highlight the ineffective employment of the military as a means of border power and policing. Indirect power is more effective and, in chapter 3, which explores the border along the Great Lakes, Hoy outlines how the new nations emerging out of Reconstruction and Confederation began to experiment with notions of belonging as a means of controlling their borders. However, the persistence of uncontrolled violence on the prairies described in chapter 4 illustrates the weak border power of national governments. It was not until it all went wrong (ê-mâyahkamikahk in Cree) in the mid-1880s, the subject of chapter 5, that the border began to make a difference. Real power lay not in the thin line that stretched across colonial maps but in the regulation of mobility hundreds of kilometers in the interior. Shifting to the Pacific Coast, chapter 6 illustrates how external ideas of belonging challenged the Indigenous systems of belonging, which were based on complex ideas of kinship and marriage. Hoy effectively contextualizes these challenges in the era of Chinese exclusion and morality policing. Detailed maps and analysis of government personnel, in chapter 7, present the direct power that we associate with border control. However, as chapter 8 explains, new techniques and border agents only expanded the chaos. Chapters 9 and 10 show how borders are most effective when they project fear in the interior, hundreds of kilometers from the line. The most visceral sentence of the book is emphatic about the genocidal potential of indirect control: “Hunger controlled movement far better than border guards ever could” (113).Maps, graphs, and illustrations effectively show the power of government institutions and policy making. Mapping the personnel and the location of points of control (customs houses, security points, and Indigenous reserves) is an effective means of representing the geography of power. University instructors looking for visuals will be pleased to know that the book is supported by a website (www.buildingborders.com). Drawing on family records, photographs, newspapers, diaries, and close to one thousand oral histories, the book is also intensely humanizing. Combining private and personal perspectives with government documents, Hoy provides an excellent model for entwining cultural and political histories. The result shows not only what happened but also how people perceived the changes over time.Hoy puts his finger on the essential uneven nature of border control. As a prism refracts light, Hoy shows how “lived experiences” of the border operate differently for Indigenous people, settlers, Chinese immigrants, Black escaped slaves, migrant workers, and tourists. For some people, crossing the border evokes barely a comment; for others it can be life changing.One of the strengths of the book is its accessibility, and Hoy has written with an effort to engage beyond the academy. However, there are issues with the quality of the editing. Oxford University Press could have done a better job in the reviewing process to catch slips of the pen, for instance, the reference to Grand River as Garden River. However, the book is sure to be a boon to readers of all levels: academic, popular, graduate, and undergraduate.This timely discussion shows that the border was created on Indigenous lands and sometimes with their help. As Hoy concludes: “Power still flows through direct and indirect means—controlling minds as much as bodies. . . . It remains one border among many, a border built on Indigenous lands with all the ambiguity and complexity that such a venture creates” (226).