Introduction - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 17

opportunity occurred shortly after returning from Malawi, while I was working
as a policy intern with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.
At that time, the Miccosukee Tribe was in a struggle over water quality rights
with the State of Florida. The Tribe was arguing that the nutrient runoff from
the upstream sugar plantations was causing damage to their water quality and the
ecosystem health of their home territory in the Everglades. Although the down-
stream water was within the “legal limits” set by the U.S. and upheld by the State,
the Miccosukee Tribe successfully argued that the nutrient load was causing severe
damage to their coastal ecosystems and negatively impacting their way of life.
Participating in the public meetings brought to light the issues of cultural preserva-
tion, environmental justice, sovereignty, and water quality (topics that are central
to this topic).
Wanting to pursue these issues further, I decided to continue my education and
joined one of the few environmental programs in the nation that explicitly linked
environmental policy and environmental science, at the Huxley College of the
Environment at Western Washington University.
So I moved to Bellingham, Washington, which sits in the northwesternmost
corner of the United States, with my now-husband, Chad, who had also worked
at the Conservancy and had, himself, been heavily influenced by his previous
experience teaching along the India-Pakistan border.
I started my degree in Geography with every intention to go back to Africa to
pursue my studies. However, along the way, a persuasive mentor, Dr. Don Alper,
pulled me aside one day and said: “you know, you could go back to Africa for
your studies, or, you have an international border right here, in your backyard.”
With that simple nudge, I oriented my compass to the Canada-U.S. border, curious
as to how I could address “international issues” that were simultaneously “local
issues”.
For my master's thesis, I studied a small aquifer - the Abbotsford-Sumas Aquifer
that was half in Canada and half in the United States. I saw how people living on
the aquifer were quick to blame “the other side” for environmental pollutants. I
also saw the dedication of people on task forces and working groups to help remedy
the issues associated with the elevated nitrate pollutants of the aquifer (the pollutants
from dairy and chicken farms, and raspberry fields). What struck me the most,
though, was how the two communities - who literally stared at each other across
Double Ditch Road, which serves as the international border - had little or no
shared identity with each other, and that the people residing on one side of the
road considered themselves distinctly “Canadian”, while those on the other side
of the road were distinctly “American”, with one group looking towards Ottawa
and the other towards Washington, DC for their political leadership. The different
currencies, political systems, fiscal calendars, and migration patterns, all within a
few miles/kilometers radius left me scratching my head. Although the population,
for the most part, shared the same language, the immigrant populations were distinct;
on the northern side of the border, Punjabi immigrants were settling in the lower
mainland of British Columbia, while Latino and Russian immigrants were settling
in northern Washington State.