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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 [First Page] [345], (1) Lines: 0 to 2 ——— 6.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [345], (1) Afterword Comparing Western Borderlands and Their Future Study Sterling Evans There are fifty-four border crossings along the forty-ninth parallel between the United States and Canada from Lake of the Woods, Minnesota /Ontario, to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Washington/British Columbia . The westernmost crossing, at Blaine, Washington/White Rock, British Columbia, is graced with a sixty-seven-foot-high concrete Peace Arch and flowered gardens (Peace Arch State Park, Washington) that warmly greet travelers on U.S. Interstate 5 and British Columbia Highway 99. With an inscription saying, “May These Gates Never Be Closed,” the arch is dedicated to “Children of a Common Mother” (despite Americans’ traditional aversion to things monarchical and disbelief that “democracy wears a crown”) and to “Brethren Dwelling in Unity.” Surprisingly, and despite this language of unity, the Washington Daughters of the Confederacy erected a memorial in the park commemorating, as apparently it has been named, the “Jefferson Davis Highway.” Similarly, straddling the forty-ninth in the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota and Manitoba is the International Peace Garden to celebrate the friendship and good relations between the two nations. Conceived by Ontario horticulturalist Henry Moore, the Peace Garden opened in 1932 and was further developed by a series of Civilian Conservation Corps (ccc) work camps to create a transboundary botanical garden honoring international peace. There Winston Churchill’s views of the border are inscribed on the walls of the peace chapel, which is situated right on the forty-ninth: “That long Canadian frontier from the Atlantic to the Pacific 346 | Afterword 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 [346], Lines: ——— 0.0pt ——— Normal PgEnds: [346], oceans, guarded only by neighbourly respect and honourable obligations, is an example to every country and a pattern for the future of the world.” And that two national parks between Alberta and Montana are joined at the border to form the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park is further testimony to the people in two nations “dwelling in unity.”1 Or perhaps as former U.S. president Bill Clinton put it, this perceived unity is the result of the two nations’ “common values.” “Our long border, the most peaceful on earth,” he wrote, “is a metaphor for all that we hold in common: a belief in human and civil rights, in free speech and federalism, in the advance of democracy and the value of trade.” And former ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci trumpeted the increased trade, much of it induced by nafta policies, as a reason to “overhaul” the border—to make it easier and quicker for the roughly two hundred million border crossings a year. In August 2001, Cellucci gave a speech in Ottawa in which he said the border should be thought of not as a frontier but rather as a meeting place, a “Main Street” in North America.2 Yet questions linger regarding the messages these kinds of words and memorials suggest. Are the commemorations at the Peace Arch, Peace Gardens, and International Peace Park misleading as to the truth about all peoples in the region “dwelling in unity” over the years? Have we all, especially American Indians/First Nations in the borderlands, shared a “common mother?” Can we all meet on Main Street or cross it freely? Why, as Bruce Miller pointed out in chapter 3, has it become even more difficult in the last few years for First Nations people to go back and forth across the border for cultural and economic reasons? And it may become even more difficult, for Native and non-Native Americans, since Homeland Security authorities announced that starting in 2007 for the first time in history U.S. citizens will have to have current passports to reenter the United States after visiting Canada. The peace memorials, all located in the West and without many counterparts along the eastern sections of the U.S./Canadian line, are designed to reflect the history of it being the longest undefended border in the world, or...

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