Benjamin Hoy - Drawing a Border Across Indigenous Lands

According to historian Benjamin Hoy, the US-Canadian border was a line  of Blood and Dirt. This is the title of his recent book, the subtitle is  Creating the Canada-United States Border Across Indigenous Lands  published by Oxford University Press in 2021. The book foregrounds what  he refers to as the lived experience of the border, and provides us with  access to the perspectives that many Indigenous people have left for  us. This book shows this was a complex history. Yes, both countries used  violence, hunger and coercion to displace Indigenous communities and  their ideas of territory and belonging. At the sametime it foregrounds  their own efforts to come to terms with, and even build the border. We  learn how federal governments, with this customs officers, border  agents, police patrols, and surveyors encountered and interacted with  Indigenous peoples and negotiated a border.