A veteran journalist says U.S. resident-elect Donald Trump’s continued threats to tighten the border between Canada and the United States is raising concerns amongst Native Americans.
“I think one of the major concerns that is popping up immediately is what does it mean for the border and to be able to cross the border for things like pow wows and ceremony and things that are fairly routine,” Mark Trahant, who has been covering Native American issues for more that five decades, said. “Is that going to get a lot more complicated?”
Trump has mused illegal drugs and migrants coming into the U.S. from Canada is a growing problem and is calling on Canadian officials to secure the border between the two countries more firmly.
Trahant said that Native Americans take not only the free movement of Indigenous people between the two countries very seriously but also traditional items.
“You have the issues of regalia if the border is being watchful for eagle feathers and other things like that,” he said. “It’s a problem and we’re supposed to have the Jay Treaty, which has its own issues, but the Jay Treaty promises that free movement and that’s something that people in tribal communities view as a very important principle.”
Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th U.S. president on Jan. 20.
Renegotiating USMCA
An expert on inter-tribal trade says it remains to be seen what might happen when Canada sits down to renegotiate the U.S.-Mexico Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA) with a second Trump administration.
“We had Canada’s Indigenous trade agenda, which was trying to put an Indigenous chapter into USMCA (in 2019). Didn’t succeed all the way, got very close to getting it but it was killed by the Trump administration,” Wayne Garnons-Williams said. “…Now that we have those policies, will they stand the test against a second Trump administration when we try to play a card…Under a Trump administration, under their policies, I don’t know.”
Canada renegotiated the trade agreement with a Trump White House and Mexico in 2019 and the agreement is set to head into review again in 2026.
Garnons-Williams is also a lawyer and CEO of the National Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation.
Canada’s democratic deficit
Hill Times columnist Rose LeMay says Canada has a big democratic deficit which is happening at the worst possible time.
“There’s never been such a matrix of crises facing this country and if we needed a prime minister that was not what we refer to as a lame duck, which means he will leave and has already decided and therefore has lost a lot of influence, this is when we need a strong leader,” the First Nations opinion writer said.
“We have a Liberal Party in disarray trying to run a leadership race, we have the threat of tariffs just days away. On top of all sorts of national issues we know are crises – health care, housing challenges, opioid use.”
Lemay said one of the problems causing this democratic deficit and creating public mistrust in institutions is the increasing amount of power vested in unelected officials in the Prime Minister’s Office leaving MPs and even cabinet ministers virtually powerless.
She does credit provincial premiers for stepping into the power vacuum created by internal problems in federal Liberal Party and showing leadership on Trump’s tariff and border threats.
