At the recent Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, government leaders committed themselves to launching a hemispheric free trade area by 2005. From Tierra Del Fuego to the Arctic, a great power struggle can be expected over whether the deal should go ahead and what should be included in it. Both sides in the debate will do all they can to recruit peoples, communities and interest groups to their cause.

Among these communities will be the aboriginal peoples of the hemisphere, who are certain to be courted by the contending forces. Living on islands and pieces of mainland in and next to the St. Lawrence River in Ontario, Quebec and New York State, the Mohawks of Akwesasne will be drawn into the debate because of the strategic terrain they occupy right along the Canada-U.S. border. For years, Akwesasne was the site for large scale cigarette smuggling between the United States and Canada.

Indeed the people of Akwesasne had their own first hand view of protesters and police on the eve of the Quebec City summit. For several weeks prior to the summit, there had been stories that American protesters, en route to Quebec City, intended to cross the border into Canada through Akwesasne.

During the week of the summit, I arrived on Cornwall Island, the Ontario piece of the Akwesasne Reserve at noon on the day the protesters were expected. By then the Canada Customs Post there had been transformed into an armed camp. A phalanx of OPP and native police officers were lined up next to the Customs Post across the only road into Akwesasne.

On the U.S. side, about a kilometer from U.S. Customs, I found the wooded grove where some Mohawks planned to welcome the protesters to their territory. Fish, venison and bread simmered in large steel trays over gas burners. Stacey Boots, who introduced himself as a member of the Akwesasne community, told the assembled Canadian and U.S. media that he believed that NAFTA has not been beneficial to the Mohawk people. Because he opposed the free trade deal being hammered out at the Summit, he intended to welcome the protesters to Akwesasne, and to provide food for them before they marched peacefully to the border.

An hour later, a caravan of about seventy-five cars and an old bus from Palm Springs, California rolled up and close to four hundred young people climbed out. Almost all of the protesters were white and in their early twenties. Many of them, I soon discovered, have been involved in other demonstrations and have faced the police before. They lined up for ample portions of food and did not seem phased by the prospect of a confrontation with police at the Canadian border.

I crossed back over the bridge to the Canadian side to watch the protesters approach the border. Tensely awaiting the arrival of the Americans were customs officials, riot police, OPP officers and their dogs, members of the Akwesasne police force and hundreds of members of the community. This was enough muscle to turn back a band of armed marauders. In the face of unarmed young people, it was massive overkill.

I found myself standing with two men and a woman about a hundred meters behind the Customs Post. My three companions were wary about the protesters choosing to enter Canada through Akwesasne. The woman, who I later learned is a chief of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, said this was not good for the community. She thought it was bound to reinforce the idea that this is a place where trouble happens. The three of them recalled earlier times of trouble for Akwesasne----the crisis a few years ago about whether spent nuclear material should be shipped through the Reserve, and the explosion of 1990 when Mohawk factions fought each other in armed battles.

Stacey Boots may share the goals of the protesters, but these three leaders----the men were also chiefs I learned----were worried about trouble that could imperil the shaky autonomy enjoyed by the Mohawks. Many of the Mohawks here regard themselves as members of an aboriginal nation and reject the notion that they are citizens of Canada or the United States. Having to deal with separate band councils and provincial and state governments in Ontario, Quebec and New York, as well as authorities in Ottawa and Washington, this divided community is a tinderbox.

At last, we witnessed a strange American invasion of Canada as the protesters appeared over the summit of the bridge on foot, followed by a long procession of cars. Off to the side I found a lacrosse field, where hundreds of residents of Akwesasne had assembled to watch the confrontation between the protesters and the police.

The protesters stopped about fifty meters from the police and Stacey Boots addressed them. While he was taking the side of the young Americans, he urged them to go through customs peacefully, either on foot or in their cars. As many of the protesters headed back to their cars, a couple of young Mohawks called out disgustedly that they were "wusses".

The riot police pulled back to one side and the protesters who stayed out of the cars proceeded to the wickets to be questioned by Customs officials. Reporters, huddled together at the side, called out questions to the protesters as they passed. Some members of the community shouted insults about how the protesters were dressed and told them to "keep moving". One young protester, asked why she opposed free trade, stopped and gave a highly articulate answer on how globalization widens the gap between rich and poor.

The Akwesasne community can be expected to be leery about any free trade deal that casts their own autonomy into doubt. But divisions within the community clearly extend to how they see the foes of free trade and the use those foes may wish to make of their strategic location on the border. If the anti free trade forces are to stand a chance of winning the battle that lies ahead, they will have to make themselves comprehensible to communities, such as the one at Akwesasne, that are not now sure what to make of them.