What is the Meaning of This Boundary Line?: Indigenous Nationhood and Colonial Borders

About the event

2024 Sherman & Mabel Smith Pettyjohn Lecture on Indigenous History

What is the Meaning of this Boundary Line?: Indigenous Nationhood and Colonial Borders

By Dr. Patrick Lozar (Salish & Kootenai) (Univ. of Montana)

Description

Since the mid-nineteenth century, Indigenous Nations of the Columbia Plateau have contended with the Canada-United States border that runs through their homelands in the interior Pacific Northwest. For the United States and Canada, the border marked each country’s separate jurisdiction at the forty-ninth parallel. For Indigenous peoples, the invisible boundary line could divide families and lands, but it could also be exploited and undermined. In this lecture, Dr. Patrick Lozar will explore the diverse ways that Indigenous Nations have responded to the imposition of colonial borders in their territories, historically and today.