Repatriating the Past: Removing the Border through Transnational History

In 2006, Washington's Nooksack Tribe and British Columbia's Stó:lō Nation collaborated to repatriate to Canada a United States-held stone figure. The figure's homecoming was heralded on both sides of the border after being missing for more than a century. This article investigates one process through which this collaboration occurred, namely, the reframing of the cultural and political geography of the region. By reframing their history as transnational, the Coast Salish are erasing the international border and challenging the settler colonial state(s) and the primacy of the nation-state system. This reframing-as-transnational approach has numerous implications for the Coast Salish as they overcome their divided status under two separate legal and political regimes. Additionally, changing our frame of reference away from the nation-state advances Coast Salish studies and anthropology itself, as we too have been divided by political borders in our research with First Nations.