In an interview with Dr. Farid Rahemtulla of UNBC we discuss some of the opportunities for new approaches to the field of Anthropology through community based archeology field schools. As discussed here, by tackling the colonial and western ideas of knowledge, new understandings of deeptime reveal sophistication and complexity that would not be otherwise visible.

The Georges, historically, like Prince George today were often reported to be notorious. In an interview with Dr. Jonathan Swainger, professor emeritus at the university of Northern British Columbia we talk about his new book, and the "making of crime" in Northern BC.

The Middle North is a region that is often associated with the frontier. It is imagined as a place on the edge of "civilization." This episode introduces some of the key ideas and theme for this new series.

According to historian Benjamin Hoy, the US-Canadian border was a line of Blood and Dirt. This is the title of his recent book, the subtitle is Creating the Canada-United States Border Across Indigenous Lands published by Oxford University Press in 2021. The book foregrounds what he refers to as the lived experience of the border, and provides us with access to the perspectives that many Indigenous people have left for us. This book shows this was a complex history. Yes, both countries used violence, hunger and coercion to displace Indigenous communities and their ideas of territory and belonging. At the sametime it foregrounds their own efforts to come to terms with, and even build the border. We learn how federal governments, with this customs officers, border agents, police patrols, and surveyors encountered and interacted with Indigenous peoples and negotiated a border.

An important part of the history of the Canadian US border is the history of slavery. Many Canadians believe that antipathy for slavery, following from what we might call the moral capital of Abolitionism, put their nation on the right side of history. In fact, frequently refugees were not welcomed, and their migration into Canada was often subjected to legal and social regulation and rejection. Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield is the leading authority on slavery in the Maritime provinces, and together we discussed his books Blacks on the Border: the Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860 and North to Bondage: Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes. In this episode we speak about what the border meant to Blacks, both refugees and slaves, and white British colonists in the Maritimes.

In her recent book Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War, Laura Madokoro describes the intense international debate around refugees from China that transformed notions of humanitarian responsibility and refugee protection. In this interview we talk about the politics of legal definitions of migration, border controls, international policing, and the problems and benefits of settler colonialism as a framework.

In 1842, the Webster-Ashburton Commission, which also led to the drawing of the international boundary, laid the first legal framework for a treaty of extradition between Canada and the United States. Despite such treaties, borderline crime continued to challenge the legal order and therefore both British and American sovereignty. Extradition treaties have always been tied to issues of territorial sovereignty, but there are other informal ways of policing the border. Bradley Miller’s book explores the challenge of the border. Borderline Crime: Fugitive Criminals and the Challenge of the Border 1819-1914, was published in 2016 by the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal history. The book is a remarkable and important study of the history of the challenge of the border and shows how governments and people struggled to deal with crime and criminals which crossed the Canadian-American border.

Competition for access to and control of the abundant salmon on west coast leads us to a history is rife with bandits, smugglers, and other lawbreakers. The issues surrounding licensing, environmental protection, and fisheries management are obviously pertinent to the history of law-enforcement, and make for a fascinating study of policing the border. In her book, The Nature of Borders: Salmon, Boundaries, and Bandits on the Salish Sea, Lissa Wadewitz, has explored the history of policing salmon fishing. Starting from the Indigenous Peoples that fished the Salish Sea and the rivers that ran into it, she explores how the area has long been the site of intensely managed fishing practices. When settler colonial states drew the boundaries along the 49th parallel they largely ignored the behaviour of the salmon. As a result their efforts to police the salmon fishery were woefully inadequate. As the canned salmon industry grew and illegal fishing escaped detection, bandits competed and stole fish from each other, nation states were unable to responsibly manage the salmon fishery. Overfishing, social tensions and international mistrust were piled on to environmental devastation and by the first quarter of the twentieth century it was clear that the fishery was in decline. In this interview we talk about the complications of jurisdiction, dispossession, and the challenges of policing this precious resource. We talk about the challenges of accessing historical sources in the history of policing illegal activities and joys and goals of writing about the histories of environmental regulation and its failures.