Hoy, Benjamin

Using the Cree refugee experience in the US following the 1885 resistance to discuss Canada's history of using the term refugee to distance themselves from political and legal responsibility to refugee conditions.

Details the ways that Canadian and United States governments used boarder surveillance, extradition, and deprivation (of access to family and home communities; of intergenerational material wealth) to police interracial unions, adultery/non-marital cohabitation, bigamy, polygamy, divorce, illegitimate children, child stealing, and abortion, and other acts deemed sexually deviant.

Looks at reasons why Indian agents and national census takers often could not obtain accurate information, including: linguistic and cultural differences, distrust, uncertainty of racial categories, geographic mobility, and isolation of communities.