The creation of borders by the US government generally ignored and disregarded Indigenous use of land, concepts of land use and property ownership, and broke up communities across borders. US settler colonialism fed into imperialism in instances where resources or opportunities were found in and around Native land, which caused the government and settlers to engage in often violent means of removing that land from Native control for settler exploitation. Even in instances where there was an element of preservation in mind for a natural environment, such as the development of national parks, there was often an economic incentive also involved, such as the development of tourism in the area or some other economic gain. The creation of national parks and the introduction of ideas of “wilderness” are also examples of a kind of imperialism in that they imposed a myth that wilderness areas were untouched, never inhabited lands which needed to be preserved, when they had really been responsibly stewarded by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years previously (also, importantly, Indigenous people’s presence generally improved the environment they were a part of because of their knowledge of natural cycles and how their actions could benefit the health of those ecosystems). The American ideal of wilderness generally included the sentiment that wilderness could only truly be enjoyed by white Americans and called for removal of Native peoples from those lands until they adopted the same mindset towards those areas as the settlers. Creating borders around natural spaces is a form of imperialism because it confines natural resources, recreation, and importantly, sustenance opportunities for communities in an inaccessible boundary that is based in Western ideas of property, wilderness, and space.
In addition, the establishment of national borders created extra legal and physical barriers for communities along both the Canadian and Mexican borders. The imposition of a national border creates opportunities for great increases in federal surveillance for Native communities, particularly when a community sits along a border, and takes away sovereignty and the freedom to move freely on traditional homelands. For example, the Pascua Yaqui tribe in Arizona has developed a proposal to expedite and make it easier for people to move across the Mexican border specifically for matters involving their community across the border because the delays and surveillance currently being experienced inhibit their ability to exercise their traditional practices as well as exert sovereignty over their traditional lands on both sides of the border. While this is a step in the right direction, it clearly exhibits how the designation of international borders takes away Native sovereignty.