From Medicine Line to Modern Surveillance: How Did We Get Here?

 

From Medicine Line to Modern Surveillance: How Did We Get Here?

I just watched a deeply unsettling video of a tattoo artist returning to Canada—being interrogated by Customs like a criminal. The tone was invasive, the questions absurd, and the power-tripping evident. It made my skin crawl. And it made me think: how did we get to this point?

This isn’t just about one bad customs officer. It’s about the dehumanizing systems we’ve built, where people are reduced to scanned documents and suspicion. Where returning home—or simply moving across land—feels like entering a cage instead of a country.

And all of this during Indigenous History Month, no less.

We forget—or are never taught—that borders in this part of the world are a relatively recent invention. My great-great-grandmother and her family came north from the Willamette Valley in Oregon to Sooke, British Columbia—long before passports, security checks, or surveillance towers. They crossed during a time when the 49th parallel was being carved across Indigenous territories, severing homelands and dividing Nations that had existed here since time immemorial.

Back then, Indigenous peoples referred to that invisible line as the "Medicine Line." Why? Because if they could make it across into Canada from the U.S., they might survive. In the south, especially in places like California, the U.S. government was actively hunting, displacing, and killing Native people, forcing them onto reservations or erasing them entirely. The "Medicine Line" offered hope. It was literally the difference between life and death.

But let’s be clear: that hope was built on fragile ground. Both colonial governments—Canada and the U.S.—were guilty of displacement, forced assimilation, and genocide. Yet for a time, the line seemed to offer a kind of sanctuary.

And now? It’s become a wall. A tool of control. A stage for bureaucratic humiliation.

We’ve gone from open land and kinship ties to militarized crossings and interrogations. We’ve moved so far from understanding the land as something shared—something sacred—to treating it like fenced-off property. And in doing so, we've also lost sight of the people who were here long before any borders.

This month, as we honour Indigenous History, let’s remember: the land remembers what it was before lines were drawn. And maybe we should too.

#IndigenousHistoryMonth #NoOneIsIllegal #MedicineLine #BorderViolence #DecolonizeNow