ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the groundwork for an analysis of civil alienation as countered by acts of Indigenous citizenship and claims for sovereignty. It draws on literary and film examples, all of which reveal the potential in straddling the Canadian– United States border, thereby suggesting an 'unofficial' space for taking advantage of its particular liminality and empowering the affected communities. The act of reclaiming citizenship is an act of ethical 'poaching', as it restores, despite governmental jurisdiction and regulations, a sense of belonging, a site of home. The continuous desecration of both space and place must be addressed, if there can be any true form of negotiation and collaboration between states and Indigenous peoples for, inadvertently, notions of language, memory, and resistance are all interwoven with what happens to the actual place from which one speaks.
