James Mast, a survivor of Cree’s sixties, says he was heading to Oklahoma so he could take care of his sick adoptive father when the tribal police on the American side of the Akwesasne reserve arrested him and handed him over the border patrol of the United States.
Mast, 60, was held in the Clinton County prison in Plattsburgh, New York, which is about 115 km southeast of Akwesasne, since his arrest on April 14 by the tribal police of St. Regis Mohawk. He was arrested after crossing the St. Lawrence river by boat and had no identification in it at that time.
Until now, Mast has spent six weeks in custody, while the United States immigration authorities determine whether Canada.
“I want to return home and I am tired of this pressure than immigration and people put saying that I am not an American,” Mast said, in a telephone interview with CBC News in jail.
“I was raised in the United States.”
Mast was initially accused of “re -entry by a deported foreigner”, but the position was retired by the United States assistant prosecutor because Mast is, said Gabrielle Dibella, his federal public defender designated.
“Being a native American meant that it could not be prosecuted for re -entered the country again,” Dibella said in an interview with CBC News.
Under the treaty of Jay of 1794 between the United States and Britain, a person with at least 50 percent of the paternity of the first nations can cross freely from Canada in the United States, a person from the first nations born in Canada can also legally live as a permanent resident with a green card in the US.
“I have never had an American native prosecuted for illegal re -entry,” said Dibella.
Dibella said they requested the Mast adoption records of the Alberta government, which told him it could take four to six months to process and provide.
CBC News contacted customs and border protection of the United States that sent the questions to the application of immigration and customs (ICE) to comment. ICE did not respond to the request for comments.
Taken from the family twice
The scoop of the sixties was a period from the 1950s to the 1980s, when thousands of indigenous children were seized by the provincial agencies of child welfare and adopted to non -indigenous families.
Mast James Cardinal was born in 1964 from Mary, who was believes, and Edward Cardinal, to Métis. They were hunters living around Fort McMurray, Alta.
“My father was an alcoholic, so I wore the skins and then I would leave my mother and the children in the trap line,” said Mast, who has three biological brothers.
Mast said that when he was two years old, his mother got sick and moved to his sister, who called for child welfare services.
“Welfare came and picked us up and took us,” he said.
He was bounced between host houses and abused until Moses and Sadie Mast, a couple of Mennonites, adopted him and took him to Spencer, Oklahoma, when he was six years old, James Mast said.
He said he reconnected with his biological mother when he was 16 years after making Oklahoma city to Anzac, Alta. But he returned to Oklahoma, to his adoptive parents, whom he considers his true family.
“That is the only family I have,” Mast said.
While building pork farms in the mid -1990s in Missouri, Mast had problems with the law, according to the records of the State Court. Mast said he was convicted of assaulting a police officer and turned 17 in prison. After his release and shortly after arriving at his home to Oklahoma, the United States immigration authorities got to arrest him.
He said he still remembers having seen his adoptive mother Sadie Mast crying while they took him.
“I told him not to worry, I’ll be fine, I’ll be back one day,” Mast said. “She died before she did. It has simply been a continuous frustration. It is angry.”
Mast was sent to immigration arrest in Dallas and deported to Calgary in 2010, according to US court records. His adoptive parents never made him an American citizen and Mast said he didn’t know how to fight deportation. He said he stayed for approximately one day at Calgary airport before heading to a shelter for homeless people, the beginning of an itinerant life in Canada.
He was entering and leaving prisons and shelters, while compiling convictions for things such as armed hand, robberies and assaults.
Mast said he ended Hamilton and then Cornwall, Ontario, about six years ago, where he found the work as a mechanic.
During his time in Cornwall, Mast said he met people from Akwesasne, the Territory of Haudanesounee that is located through the St. Lawrence River from the small city. Mast said he crossed the river on a boat on April 13, jumped on the south coast and hid in a wooded area during the night.
The family awaits him
The next day, Mast said he was walking through the community, trying to discover how to continue his trip to Oklahoma when he was arrested by the tribal police who later informed the border patrol of the US that was intoxicated.
“They lied, and that is what always puts me in trouble, so I get angry with the police, because they lie,” Mast said.
“How can they say I was intoxicated? They didn’t take breathalyzer … In fact, I don’t drink.”
He said they arrested him after hitting his hand in the trunk of the police cruise.
“I said: ‘There, now you can arrest me,” Mast said during the telephone interview with CBC News.
Mast said he just wants to get home and take care of his adoptive father. It still hurts that he was not there when his adoptive mother died.
“I imagine it is time to return home and take care of it, as if taking care of me when I was younger,” he said.
“He needs me there.”
Mast’s father is about 80 years old, he suffers from dementia and is currently in a careful life of assisted life, said Bonnie Bellah, James Mast’s cousin.
Bellah has taken care of the main care role for Moses Mast. She said the family is aware that James Mast is in custody and would welcome her return.
“We would all hug him,” said Bellah, in a telephone interview with Spencer, Okla.
“We love him and want the best for him. It is a difficult situation, it is adopted, but he is a family and the family is very important.”
