20/07/2025
Before the United States was a nation, before Canada was a dominion, before Mexico was a republic — there were nations already here.Our nations.
We moved with the buffalo. We crossed the Rio Grande before it was given a Spanish name. We followed the rivers through the northern forests to the coastlines of the east and west. There were no walls to divide us, only trails that connected us — trade routes, ceremonial highways, and kinship networks older than memory.
Today, they call it a border crisis.
But for us, the real crisis is the erasure of our Indigenous identity, mobility, and sovereignty by colonial governments that continue to build walls through our nations and laws against our very existence.
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The Jay Treaty and the Northern Border
The Jay Treaty of 1794 is one of the few colonial documents that acknowledges what we have always known: Indigenous peoples are not bound by the artificial border between the U.S. and Canada.
Article III of that treaty guarantees that:
“…the Indians dwelling on either side of the boundary line… shall have the liberty to pass and repass by land or inland navigation… and to navigate all the lakes, rivers, and waters thereof… freely.”
Though written by colonial hands, this provision affirms our inherent right to mobility — to travel, visit relatives, gather medicines, attend ceremony, and maintain our way of life without obstruction.
To this day, the United States recognizes this right in law. Many Indigenous people born in Canada have used the Jay Treaty to live, work, and cross into the U.S. without immigration restrictions. Yet enforcement is inconsistent, and Canada has never reciprocated — often ignoring the treaty entirely, despite the shared responsibility.
Even now, many of our people are detained, questioned, or deported simply for exercising the very rights our ancestors fought to preserve.
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The Southern Border: Another Wall Across Indigenous Lands
The same crisis is mirrored — and in many ways intensified — at the southern border.
The Tohono O’odham, the Kickapoo, the Kumeyaay, the Yaqui, the Lipan Apache, the Chichimeca, the Nahua — these Indigenous nations predate both the United States and Mexico. Their lands, families, and ceremonies straddle the so-called border, yet they are often treated like foreigners on their own territory.
The construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall has desecrated sacred sites, split communities, and criminalized Indigenous people for practicing their traditional ways. Elders are denied access to ceremonies. Youth are separated from their families. Relatives cannot attend funerals. Medicines cannot be gathered freely. All in the name of national security.
But what is truly being secured, and for whom?
Indigenous people are not immigrants on this land. We are the original nations. Our presence is not a threat — it is a truth that challenges the very foundations of colonial borders.
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This Is Not a Border Crisis — It’s a Colonial Crisis
Let’s name it for what it is.
The current crisis is not just about unauthorized entry. It’s not just about immigration policy. It’s about the ongoing enforcement of colonial boundaries that were never meant for us.
Borders were not drawn to respect Indigenous life. They were drawn to divide our territories, to break our trade routes, to weaken our spiritual connections, and to impose control.
And yet — we are still here.
We are still crossing.
We are still remembering.
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A Border Cannot Contain a Nation
From the Jay Treaty in the north to the desecrated lands in the south, the story is the same: Indigenous people are still being told where we can and cannot exist on our own homelands.
But our rights do not come from governments.
They come from the land.
They come from the stars.
They come from the ancestors who walked these routes long before the ink dried on any colonial treaty.
Whether we are Anishinaabe crossing from Ontario to Minnesota, or Tohono O’odham crossing from Sonora to Arizona, or Taíno remembering the shores of Borikén — our migration is not illegal. It is sacred.
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The Path Forward: Reclaiming Our Right to Move Freely
We must push for:
• Full and reciprocal recognition of the Jay Treaty by both the U.S. and Canada
• Legal protections for southern Indigenous nations split by the U.S.-Mexico border
• The right to cross, gather, worship, and reunite without harassment or surveillance
• A dismantling of colonial frameworks that treat Indigenous existence as a threat
Because the land remembers us.
Because no wall can divide a people rooted in the soil.
Because our nations stretch from the boreal north to the sun-soaked deserts of the south — and we are rising.
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Final Words: The Roads Are Still There
Let them call it a crisis.
We will call it a return.
We are not crossing borders.
We are walking home.
And we will continue to walk, as long as the rivers flow, the stars shine, and the old trails remember our names.
Our Indigenous migration routes existed long before your borders — and they will exist long after they are gone.
Tâpwê nîtisânak.
—Kanipawit Maskwa
John Gonzalez
Standing Bear Network
