ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on border community, located on what most observers would identify as the American-Canadian border - the Mohawk community of Akwesasne - which has been the site of increasingly agitated discussion. It argues that the case of Akwesasne is one particular example of a much more general phenomenon. The chapter suggests that there are several connected issues involved in the analysis of “transnational crime”, and illustrates it in the case of Akwesasne. The first focuses on the issue of sovereignty - the questioning of the capacity of either of the two connecting nation states to exercise its jurisdiction over territory which different Mohawk groups claim as their own, making no concession to the claims of the colonizing nation-state. The second focuses on the divergence of national practices in adjacent nation-states and the different taxation regimes being developed in each nation-state in respect of key commodities pursued with respect to trading markets.
