The line which separates : race, gender, and the making of the Alberta-Montana borderlands

Summary: Nations are made and unmade at their borders, and the forty-ninth parallel separating Montana and Alberta in the late nineteenth century was a pivotal Western site for both the United States and Canada. Blackfoot country was a key site of Canadian and American efforts to shape their nations and national identities. The region's landscape, aboriginal people, newcomers, railroads, and ongoing cross-border ties all challenged the governments' efforts to create, colonize, and nationalize the Alberta-Montana borderlands. The Line Which Separates makes an important and useful comparison between American and Canadian government policies and attitudes regarding race, gender, and homesteading. Drawing on a range of sources, from government maps and reports to oral testimony and personal papers, The Line Which Separates explores the uneven way in which the borderlands were superimposed on Blackfoot country in order to divide a previously cohesive region in the late nineteenth century.

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