Creating a Border and Dividing a People
Metis and the Medicine Line is a sprawling, ambitious look at how national borders and notions of race were created and manipulated to unlock access to indigenous lands. It is also an intimate story of individuals and families, brought vividly to life by history writing at its best. It begins with the emergence of the Plains Metis and ends with the fracturing of their communities as the Canada-U.S. border was enforced. It also explores the borderland world of the Northern Plains, where an astonishing diversity of people met and mingled: Blackfoot, Cree, Gros Ventre, Lakota, Dakota, Nez Perce, Assiniboine, Anishinaabes, Metis, Europeans, Canadians, Americans, soldiers, police, settlers, farmers, hunters, traders, bureaucrats. In examining the battles that emerged over who belonged on what side of the border, Hogue disputes Canada's peaceful settlement story of the Prairie West and challenges familiar bromides about the "world's longest undefended border."