Goodreads Doesn't Have It, Data Migration: The Nature of Borders
This book is truly excellent in terms of research. It depicts fairly the native reality encountering white settlers and doesn't falsely glamorize the native population while remaining real about the stripping for resources that they suffered under the whites. They remain honest about the fact the natives would often lie to settlers or believe superstitiously even the most cooperative white people were bad luck. They even talk about the weaponization of cultural differences to disenfranchise white fisheries; by saying every last one of their tools would offend the salmon people, sometimes sailors were deterred. It also speaks on detection, patrol, and the falsity of the market. It is very similar to my own experience. People claim they want things to be fair...for them. But when there's an opportunity for greed to lead to more access for them as a population, they turn a blind eye or even strip officials down bare. Most interestingly, I think it showed the true hypocrisy of borders. Americans had a false agreement to not engage in salmon fishing during certain times to let the salmon spawn and recover. It became clear to Canadians that first believed Americans could exercise such self-control in the face of such profits that they were wrong. They watched as the Americans said one thing while were unable to stop themselves from harvesting, putting Canadians at a huge loss for trusting the Americans had any honor. Unwilling to put their own fisheries out because of American greed, they too stopped obeying the contract. There were extensions for fishing times and pushes to extend the border south of the 49th parallel in certain places that were successful. Ultimately, conservation became a falsity to seem like people cared but nobody actually did, especially if they benefited the most. It's something I've seen repeatedly; people say they want to conserve, they say they want lack of corruption, but they don't have the self-control for it when it actually benefits them. And to me that really showed the relationship between honor, self-control, and quality of life as well as the developmental status of a nation. This is a really good book on the content it speaks on. It is even-keeled, real about the racial issues at hand, and not condescending in terms of glamorizing the past or the native population. Nor is it excessively judgmental, often citing real causes for how things happened that may help us to solve them.