History of Saint-Régis, Québec, Canada

Mohawk people, from one of the six American Indian nations in the Iroquois Confederacy, have hunted, fished and lived by the St. Lawrence River for hundreds of years.

But after the War of 1812, their sovereign territory known as Akwesasne was bisected in two when the United States and Great Britain drew a line on a map, creating today's northern border between New York state and Canada. Now the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation sits in both countries, with borders of its own...

The border is an invisible line in the St. Lawrence River, separating the most northern portion of upstate New York from Canada. But the demarcation winds through islands, around peninsulas and suddenly juts inland at the reservation. It is also the point where New York State and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec all meet.

"This is our land, and all of a sudden, borders are put up," says Matthew Rourke, St. Regis Mohawk tribal police chief, "and we're tasked with protecting those borders."...

"It's not necessarily that it's a Native American reservation," says U.S. Border Patrol agent Wade Laughman, who directs operations in the region around Akwesasne. He says it's not fair to blame the Mohawks. "It's the geography of the reservation. It's the fact that half of the reservation is in Canada basically and half is in the United States."...