Looking at the borders of Shadowrun's North American nations in Google Earth, I noticed several odd border projections. This isn't abnormal: America [and the world] is full of such excitement, and every one has a story. So does anyone know the story with Thunder Bay and the access to Lake Superior and Isle Royale that the Algonkian-Manitoo Council has. It strains credulity that the UCAS would allow them to keep this parcel of land, given that the Trans-Canada Highway shoots through it, and it's a long way around. Right-of-way or easement, I could believe, but letting them keep this within their borders? There'd need to be a good story behind it. Anyone know it?

I don't know why but my guess would be it keeps a warm water port, after a fashino that wouldn't freeze in winter. Remeber the arctic ocean, not counting global warming is locked in, the nation needs some access to the outside world.

Hmm that is a good question. Obviously the desire for a port that didn't freeze year round definitely played into the NAN's role in negotiating for it-I assume the NAN negotiated as a whole, because doing it as individual tribes would have been messy. But why would the UCAS consent? This leads me to speculate a number of things including perhaps shared access or control?

Maybe in exchange for the Seattle access to the Pacific, in a complex N-way horsetrade with other NAN members?

Likely the NAN still needs trucks to be able to use the road. If they close the borders completely, than the other nations would close their borders. It is probably a mutually beneficial to keep the road open to everyone. Also maybe this is covered in the Treaty of Denver, or some other treaty. If so, then you get to use the road, but the NAN has to pay for upkeep and repairs done to the road. As long as they are letting you use it, it seems like you win more by letting them keep control and having to pay the upkeep.

It may well be a situation like the Panama Canal. It officially belongs to Panama, but let's see how long that lasts if they try to block US shipping.

I imagine the negotiating table in Denver had to have been a very interesting, and dangerous place.

The United States and Canadian governments had to be getting pressured from all sides: the states who were literally losing their very existence; the other states who were worried about it being them; corporations with assets in the areas; various political factions with their own agendas; various federal agencies who may or may not have wanted to make peace-including the defense establishment; scared citizens who just literally had their homes burned down around them and watched their neighbors die hideously from creatures of myths-spirits; arrow wounds. Heh, it'd be a hectic time.

On the flip side here's the fledgling native American nations barely united by Daniel Howling Coyote, harnessing powers they can barely control let alone understand fully. Likely compromised from the inside by factions like the Tir who had their own agenda; trying to present a cohesive front.

Add to this the ever present concern about what magic could actually do: mind control, reading minds....

A warm-water port, with access to the Atlantic and to Chicago [and Isle Royale], is absolutely why they'd want it, I just can't figure out why anyone would let them have it. There's a similar little remainder over to the east, but in that case I can't see any reason Quebec or the UCAS would care: it's not [as far as I can tell] significant land.

But to grant the AMC not just an easement, but the city of Thunder Bay and a set of borders guaranteed to really mess up the UCAS highway system in the north...there'd need to be a good reason on the UCAS side.* Maybe that "good reason" is just the Ghost Dance, I don't know. And as long as no one else knows, either - I think it's safe to say we're all speculating here? - then I think I'll invent my own good reason. There's a story in every border, if you know where to look.

*Chance are, the "good reason" is actually that these borders were drawn by people who weren't putting this much thought into every one of them, and who presumed that if it got important, they'd think of something. Many of them seem to have been drawn on highways, which is one of the dumbest ways to try to make a border...and it shows.

I'm wondering if what we got for it was Winnipeg, given the high Native population of that city. But I've always kind of imagined Winnipeg as the Hue of the Ghost Dance War, the Anglo forces only taking it back by pushing the rebels out with a nasty house-to-house assault and pretty much leveling the place. They're not going to be inclined to hand it back over after fighting really hard for it.

That's something I'd love to see dealt with-the after effects of having fought a major engagement on your own soil. I mean they still find unexploded ordinance from World War II in Europe and Guam. Imagine the kind of destruction this kind fo conflict could have created?

And possibly some other citizens who felt concerned when the federal government started sending tribal people and every one connected with them to internment camps or prisons (plus probably quite a few environmentalists, who also opposed the resources rush, that corporate-controlled intelligence contractors would designate as SAIM supporters...).

And, in Canada, a whole lot of pissed off Metis.

Yeah, my list was by no means exhaustive. The list really could be pretty endless. I mean imagine what is basically a civil war-and all of the various dissatisfied groups out there. Then add in magic, and cybertechnology. Woof. I'd love to see this explored, peripherally mind you, but still it's a great story!

In my dreams, where I'm motivated, I'd relaunch and reboot Shadowrun, and the first thing I'd fix would be the scale and scope of the Native American Nations. What a completely unbelievable plot element [Nunavut notwithstanding], which nevertheless is absolutely critical to the geopolitics of the game.

what might have figured into it, is the land was Canada, not the USA and my best guess is the Canadians were in no position to argue. They lost quebec, British Columbia and were probably scrambling like mad, the americans with typical arogance- not our stuff man' probably happily traded the warm water access forsomething else, with the canadians being told 'you don't like it, survive on your own man"

Honestly, all we'd need is a Indian Affairs Minister that's, I don't know, actually from the First Nations?

It's an interesting possibility-that negotiations were also fractured on both sides of the table.

Your charmingly prejudicial characterization of our national politics notwithstanding, Canada was still in charge of Canada at the Denver treaty negotiations; they still got to be them for another 12 years or so, I think. Interestingly, they hadn't exactly lost Quebec yet, either, although they'd elected the separatists some years earlier; as I recall, Quebec just sort of didn't bother signing the Treaty, and thus kind of fell into the Republic they'd created earlier in preparation for their secession.

Typical, Canada's history in things doesn't get a lot of space or time. Then again, we're a pretty small group to pander to RPG wise, so it's not to be unexpected.

I mean, hell, who thinks of Shadowrunning in Winnipeg or Toronto? And what's in Ottawa now except the Former-Royal Mint?