Introduction - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 6

mechanisms (Cohen and Davidson, 2011). Little attention, however, has been paid
to the growing number of Indigenous communities that are participating in,
developing, and influencing transboundary water governance. Some attention has
been paid to the growing inter-governmental agreements between Aboriginal
governments and provincial governments within Canada (Nelles and Alcantara,
2011; Alcantara and Nelles, 2014), but this analysis rarely extends into international
agreements).
Divergent management systems
Management systems in place to govern transboundary water and resources (as
well as other environmental issues) largely operate within established political and
cultural frameworks that reinforce dominant narratives and networks. For those
outside of these established systems - either by choice or by circumstance - it can
prove challenging to have your needs met. For Indigenous communities, the borders
pose a set of challenges that are often invisible to those operating within the
dominant governance framework.
Culturally, the border impacts travel between communities that reside on either
side of the border, between traditional homelands that span the nation-state
boundary (Miller, 1997, 2006). The international border also impacts the trading
of culturally relevant goods and subjects them to tariffs that make traditional practices
such as potlatching cost-prohibitive (Miller, 1997; Thom, 2010). It confines
territory to reservations (or reserves in Canada). For those that were non-signatories
on the original treaties, such as the Samish Nation in western Washington, it leaves
them without a federally recognized space to call home (with protected status).
Although the tribes still have a “homeland” in the sense that they have traditional
territory, access to these lands are not preserved as they chose not to engage in the
original Treaty process (Harmon, 2000).
The international border also poses significant impacts to harvesting migrating
species of fish. The infamous “fish wars” between Canada and the U.S. show how
the restructuring of jurisdictions impacts access to flow resources such as migrating
salmon (Taylor, 1999). Similarly, international rivers such as the Columbia, which
flows south from British Columbia, Canada into Washington State, are altered by
political decisions and hydropolitics. The decisions to prioritize energy over intact
fisheries can be “read” by the dams and reservoirs spanning the length of the river.
When the Columbia River Treaty was negotiated in the early 1960s, Indigenous
communities were excluded from the discussions. In the Treaty renegotiation
process (which, at the time of writing, is underway), the dynamics have become
more inclusive. The hydropolitics of waterways are visible the world over. The
Mekong Basin, for example, is a dramatic example of privileging hydropower over
protecting traditional homelands and ecosystems (Sneddon and Fox, 2006). The
Los Angeles River - which people more often identify as the drag-racing scene
in the classic film Grease than an actual river - is often portrayed as a cautionary
tale of what can go wrong when we turn our back on waterways. The Colorado