Iroquois Confederacy: Immigration

Steely Gaze Dept: Ever since the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, crossing that imaginary border between our two countries has become increasingly difficult. Contrary to popular jurisprudence, at the border you are now assumed to be guilty until you can prove yourself innocent. Everybody now needs an official passport to go south. Even the Canadian Indian status card – I never left Canada or home without it – is no longer accepted to cross the 49th parallel, one customs agent informed me. Native people on their own continent must whip out their Canadian passports to prove who they are, in order to travel to Turtle Island, according to Globe And Mail. Of course, there's the memory of Oka. This very week was the 20th anniversary of that pivotal event in Canadian native sovereignty that made the name mean more than just a smelly cheese. To put it into perspective, once all the smoke settled the 78-day occupation and subsequent court challenges and inquiries caused more damage, including the life of a Quebec police officer, and cost almost half as much as the G20 conference. However, the siege did generate one okay made-for-TV movie and managed to make one lone army corporal with a steely gaze a star. Granted, irate Mohawks can be troublesome but the irony here was that most of the trouble-makers as the politicians would call them were coming up from the States to Canada, to join the party and on their way to England to play at the Lacrosse World Championships – a game the Iroquois invented, by the way – the 23 members of the team were prevented from boarding the plane because they insisted as always on using a passport by the Iroquois Confederacy. English officials were afraid the team would not be allowed back into America afterward, now that the airports have much stricter immigration rules. After some swift negotiations with the State Department and in particular Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an agreement for this particular event was worked out. Still, it was not enough. They missed their plane, and their chance to play. Getting in and out of America can be such a pain. I never knew Canadian native terrorists were such a threat down there, Tyendinaga's Shawn Brant notwithstanding. His claim to fame, if you remember, was blocking the 401 several years back, thus making a thousand or so white people late for work. Hardly an Osama bin Brant. As reported in the news.
@t canadian passports, native sovereignty