Indigenous entrepreneurs explore 231-year old treaty as a way around US tariffs

Hamilton Spectator

13-05-2025

A First Nations trapper and entrepreneur is using his rights under a 231-year-old treaty to run his business across the US-Canada border without a visa, and other Indigenous business owners are also now using this legal pathway to bypass rising US tariffs and trade restrictions.
George Bahm, a member of the Teslin Tlingit Council, and his wife expanded their business, Wild Yukon Furs, into the US in 2022. They sell fur jewellery and handmade goods sourced and created in their Yukon facility to tourists in Skagway, Alaska — a popular stop for international and domestic visitors during the busy cruise season.
'Most of the time, they just ask for my Canadian status card, and then, away I go. It's super simple,' Bahm said, who crosses the border regularly using his Native Alaskan heritage under the 1794 Jay Treaty.
Balm and his mother were born in Yukon, and his great-grandparents have Alaskan lineage. 'All my life, I've known that Alaska is one of our trading partners,' said Bahm.
With the help of a lawyer, he secured his right to live and work in the US indefinitely under the treaty, allowing him to expand his business across the border. His wife, who is Canadian and non-Indigenous, had to apply for an investor visa to join him.
'The Tlingit have been travelling from the coast to the interior for 10,000 years,' Bahm said. 'Colonial borders tried to cut off our access, our identity. It's important to exercise that right and privilege to trade across the coast.'
While Bahm mainly uses the Jay Treaty for business mobility, the treaty is gaining momentum as a means to counter tariff tensions.
The treaty, signed in 1794 between the US and Great Britain, guarantees Indigenous Peoples on both sides of the border the right to freely move, work and live — recognizing trade networks that existed before borders were imposed without Indigenous consent.
Many Indigenous entrepreneurs are now seeking to revive those networks.
In British Columbia, Larry Johnson, president of Nuu-chah-nulth Seafood LP and a member of the Huu-ay-aht First Nations, is exploring how to use the treaty to bypass trade barriers and sell Indigenous seafood to US-based casinos, which are eager to buy from Canadian Indigenous communities.
'We can see if there's a way we could breathe life into the Jay Treaty in a modern context, and be free of any kind of tariffs, but based on relationships between two nations,' Johnson said.
Some believe that operationalizing the Jay Treaty could help establish an Indigenous trade network independent of both Canada and the United States.
'If you fly over Turtle Island [an Indigenous name for North America], you're not just seeing highways — you're seeing Indigenous trade routes that have been in place for thousands of years,' said Carol Anne Hilton, CEO and founder of the Indigenomics Institute.
'That trade system never disappeared. It's just never been part of the dominant narrative.'
The routes are based not on Western models of trade, but on pre-colonial relationship-based systems that stretch back thousands of years, said Hilton.
While the US has set guidelines allowing Canadian-born Indigenous people with at least 50 per cent Aboriginal ancestry to live, work, and cross the border without visas or green cards, the treaty provision is not in force in Canada, and the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed in 1956 that the treaty is not recognized as Canadian law.
Subsequent court cases
have also rejected cross-border mobility or commerce rights based on it.
That doesn't mean Indigenous Peoples in Canada aren't willing to see how it can be put into practice.
'It's an opportune time to test that practice and take it to scale,' said John Desjarlais, executive director of the Indigenous Resource Network.
Canada's wealth and GDP are deeply connected to First Nations' land and natural resources that fuel industries and sustain communities on both sides of the border. Their contribution to the economy already
totals $56 billion
, with Indigenous-owned businesses growing rapidly in sectors like clean energy and critical minerals.
'First Nations need a full seat at that table, particularly now more than ever before,' said Cindy Woodhouse, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in an interview with Canada's National Observer.
Woodhouse said despite their contribution, Indigenous communities have been consistently left out of economic discussions that impact their stewardship of lands and resources.
'We've experienced the absence of our self-determination. We've experienced the absence of our sovereignty and the rebuilding of nations,' Hilton said. 'Indigenous people should be represented at this moment as powerful economic agents.'
Legal recognition and evolution of Indigenous rights have created the conditions for Indigenous inclusion in national and international trade, such as the
UNDRIP
, which mandates free, prior, and informed consent on matters that affect Indigenous territories and governance, said Hilton.
Woodhouse is holding regular meetings with US tribes to discuss economic relationships and addressing the impacts of trade barriers.
'We can support each other in navigating this new era of US colonialism,' said Woodhouse. 'Dismantle trade barriers within Canada, close long-standing infrastructure gaps, and develop trade relations around the globe.'
While Bahm and his wife Vanessa Aegirsdottir's business has remained unaffected by the tariffs so far, uncertainty still looms as they head to Alaska for the busy season.
'There's no playbook for how to do this, which is unfortunate, because this border is much younger than the trade relationship between Canada and the US,' Aegirsdottir said.
Aegirsdottir said the process of qualifying for the treaty is convoluted. Bahm had to prove his ancestry through a blood quantum system. The process may be more difficult for some Indigenous people — particularly residential school and Sixties Scoop survivors who may not have access to the necessary documentation.
'It would be nice to see a process enacted that makes it much simpler and more accessible for trade routes to be honoured and utilized on a regular basis, as they would have been before contact and before these borders were implemented,' Aegirsdottir said.
Sonal Gupta / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada's National Observer