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This chapter delves into the environmental assault on Akwesasne as well as the tribe’s resistance. In the 1950s, Canada and the United States started building the St. Lawrence Seaway, a system of canals, locks, and channels that enabled ships to launch in the Great Lakes and sail clear to the Atlantic Ocean. One of its many regional side projects entailed a massive hydroelectric dam that straddled the international borderline. Its construction drowned out six villages and virtually all of the area’s beaver hutches, displacing some 6,500 people—many of whom were Mohawk—and decimating the trapping industry. The dam also lured businesses into the area, including General Motors, Reynolds Metals, and the Aluminum Company of America, all three of which opened factories on the outskirts of Akwesasne and slowly began to poison the area’s air and rivers. The Environmental Protection Agency has done little to help, and many Mohawks resent them for it. The author interviews activists who have taken matters into their own hands with direct action against the corporations—and have been sued as a result.

This chapter explores the history and modern-day ramifications of the so-called “Casino War” at Akwesasne. In the mid-1980s, some free-wheeling Mohawks who’d made a mint trading tobacco started opening up casinos without the consent of any government, tribal or federal. Their opponents (who came to be known as “the Antis”) protested that casinos would not only increase drug-trafficking, prostitution, corruption, and overall lawlessness at Akwesasne but also weaken Mohawk identity by bringing so many outsiders into their community. The casino-owners and their supporters (who branded themselves “the Warriors”) countered that the tribe would grow so rich from gambling, they could fund cultural institutions like language schools and museums that would help preserve their identity. Both sides considered their line of thought “traditional” and the truest way to sovereignty. From the late 1980s through spring of 1990, they battled with increasing ferocity that included street barricades and checkpoints, car chases, fire bombings, the forced evacuation of over half the Nation, and—before New York state troopers finally marched in—bloodshed. After re-establishing control, the tribal government shuttered all of the casinos and in 1999 opened the “official” one today known as the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino. A quarter century later, however, tensions still linger.

Twelve different jurisdictions wield some degree of power over the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne: four counties, one state, two provinces, two countries, and three different tribal governments. When calamity strikes, any of the following law enforcement agencies can be summoned: the Akwesasne Mohawk Police, the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Police, the New York State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Border Patrol, the Sûreté du Québec, the Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and/or the Canada Border Services Agency. “No wonder we are crazy,” a Mohawk elder tells the author. In this chapter, the author joins hundreds of Mohawks as they shut down their version of a border wall: a series of bridges connecting their nation with Ontario and New York. Also featured is a history of Mohawks’ timeheld trade of steelwork.

What does it mean to be Mohawk today—especially given that so many traditions (hunting, fishing, fur trapping, basketry) have been compromised by outside influences (polluting industries, the drug trade, human trafficking, the Internet)? Of Akwesasne’s 12,000 residents, only a thousand still speak their native language fluently. Most of them are elderly. This chapter investigates Mohawk efforts to revitalize their native language, including an immersive K-8 school called the Akwesasne Freedom School. The author also reflects upon the loss of her own mother tongue back in the South Texas public education system, where Tejano children were punished for their Mexican accents.

The author begins her exploration of the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne by visiting the many smoke shops lining the highway. After befriending a clerk at one shop, she starts to see the community’s similarities to Tejanos, particularly in regards to drug trafficking. She also learns that Mohawks do not consider their covert transferring of cigarettes from one nation to the next “smuggling,” but rather: “trading.” That is because Mohawks have been living in the St. Lawrence River Valley since time immemorial—long before white men drew arbitrary lines across it. The United States and Great Britain signed The Jay Treaty two centuries ago granting Indians the right to trade with each other. Canada, however, sharply disagrees with this reasoning, as its government loses upward of $2 billion annually to lost tax revenue.

In this chapter, the author attends a child’s pool party at the home of a famous Mohawk drug trafficker. Through her interviews with his wife as well as two other drug dealers, she learns about the dark side of the economy at Akwesasne, and compares it to the situation back in South Texas.

Part Two of the book commences when, after five years of story-gathering in her native South Texas, the author relocates to the region of upstate New York known as “The North Country” for a year-long professorship at St. Lawrence University. She soon learns that the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne is just a 40 minute drive away. She recognizes this nation as the setting for the haunting 2008 film “Frozen River,” about human trafficking across the St. Lawrence River. After an encounter with the U.S. Border Patrol, the author quickly realizes she is back in nepantla, the land of in-between.

The author ends her journey at Akwesasne with a visit to the Longhouse, where she participates in a Strawberry Ceremony celebrating the arrival of summer. There, she learns about the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen, the Thanksgiving Address that is given before all events of consequence throughout the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Confederacy. In it, all the forces that construct the universe are individually thanked, from the berries to the fish to the birds to the moon.

The author concludes her exploration of the U.S. borderlands with a meditation on the concept of borderlines. They don’t just delineate countries. Political parties are highly adept at redrawing the lines of congressional districts with a legal magic that—at the ballot box—brings about “miracles” on par with La Virgen de Guadalupe (only nowhere near as hopeful). For a borderline is an injustice. It is a time-held method of partitioning the planet for the benefit of the elite. Fortunately, there are legions of activists, artists, and faith keepers out there, petitioning on humanity’s behalf, but they need serious reinforcement. For the greatest lesson in nepantla is that many borderlines needn’t exist at all.