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Journal: Review of International American Studies

Introduction: Culture, Politics, and the Canada-US Border

Jasmin Habib , Jane Desmond

Language: EN | Published: 01-02-2025 | Abstract | pp. 25-48

In this thematic issue of RIAS, we address a number of issues about the border, drawing on perspectives from multiple disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, from anthropology to political science, economics, and literature, and including the works of scholars based in Canada, the US, and Germany. Their works engage issues of Indigeneity, Africandescendant populations, Franco-Canadians, Gender and Race, Colonialisms, and the more-than-human world. Topics include hunting, cross-border Indigenous relations, treaties, oil protests, immigration, domestic workers, historical memory, creative fiction, and the notions of borders as textures, zones, lines, connections, and cultural imaginaries. Our emphasis on combining social science and humanities approaches is essential to this work. Much previous work on the Canada-US border has tended to focus either on political/legal issues or on literary/media studies. Instead, we strive instead to bring multiple disciplinary perspectives into conversation and include artistic/visual
work. This volume thus contributes to a broader project than one that would center on nationalist interests—either the US or Canada’s—and rather brings to the study of bordering practices and border theory a continental approach, one that attends to the places and spaces that are and/or become the border.

2025-02-01



Journal: Review of International American Studies

On Amending the 1916 Migratory Birds Convention: Indigenous Reflections and Priorities

Philip Awashish , Jasmin Habib

Language: EN | Published: 03-01-2025 | Abstract | pp. 129-153

This article is the result of a collaboration between Philip Awashish, Eeyou leader, and anthropologist Jasmin Habib. It provides an account of the process by which the people of Eeyou Istchee, also known as the James Bay Cree, sought and, in the end, succeeded in obtaining an amendment to the Convention for the Protection of Migratory Birds in the United States and Canada (1916). The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement signed in 1975 expressly permitted the goose hunt at all seasons and therefore conflicted with the 1916 Convention and the Act and regulations that enforced it. A protocol drawn up by Canadian and American negotiators in 1979, allowing exceptions to the closed season for Indigenous populations, was rebuffed by conservationists. However, the 1982 Canadian Constitution Act affirmed the primacy of treaty obligations of the Governments of Canada and Quebec and Indigenous peoples, and the courts ruled that it, therefore, permitted the harvesting of migratory birds. Eeyou’s attitudes respecting the economic and spiritual importance of the hunt are explored in the article. The article describes how this conflict of law was successfully resolved with a new protocol in 1995.

2025-01-03