The relevance of the setting is that it both allows for the characters to be stopped and provides a visual example of the types of borders that exist between countries and between people.

When the protagonist and his mother arrive at the border to go to America from Canada, the guard asks his mother for her citizenship. His mother replies, "Blackfoot." He asks if she means Canadian, but she continues to affirm her first answer. The guard explains that members of the tribe exist on either side of the border and they need to know which side she comes from. She refuses to answer because her citizenship is Blackfoot—she lives on the reservation—and to her, that's all the relevant information there is.

The cultural border between the Blackfoot woman and the guards at the border is represented by the setting. The divide between the two countries isn't large in size, but is very large in terms of experience and cultural difference. The same can be said for the guards and the woman they're questioning. To them, she's being a frustrating nuisance who refuses to answer what (to them) is a simple question. For her, though, the question is loaded with history and injustice .

"Borders," a short story by Thomas King, centers on a mother of Blackfoot descent wrestling with her native identity under the crushing cultural weight of both the US and Canada—that is, nations of largely Western European roots.

The primary setting of the story is the Canadian border crossing of Coutts, a village in Alberta that has served in such capacity for over a century and continues to be one of the busiest crossings between the two countries today.

The main character is a woman named Laetitia, whose goal, along with her son, is to get over the border to visit Salt Lake City. She is established as a very strong-willed, independent, resilient character who refuses to deny her cultural identity regardless of the pressures put upon her to choose either the US or Canada.

Night after night, Laetitia and her son park their car at the duty free store after being turned away at the crossing. Her refusal to give up provides a stark picture of a person who stays true to herself at all costs and, through her, a people who will fight to maintain their identity despite outside oppressive forces (epitomized by the role of the border guards).

In this way, the border crossing setting not only acts as a physical barrier (one that serves as a literal obstacle to the protagonist's journey) but also as a philosophical one that challenges the very essence of Laetitia's being. The fact that she ultimately overcomes both obstacles is a testament to the human spirit.

Thomas King set the story “Borders” on the Canadian-American border during modern times. The narrator and his mother are Blackfoots living on a reservation in Canada. When the narrator and his mother go to visit her sister, they are required to cross the border into the United States. Crossing the border symbolizes giving up your identity and leaving your country behind. The narrator mentions dressing up for the trip because “mother did not want us crossing the border looking like Americans.”

When the pair arrive at the border crossing, the mother “drove all the way to the border in first gear, slowly, as if she were trying to see through a bad storm or riding high on black ice.” When approached by the border patrol, the mother refuses to claim her nationality as anything other than Blackfoot. Refusing to state that she is from Canada traps the duo between borders. This symbolizes the plight of the Native Americans and their lack of a true land or country. Although the mother very strongly identifies with her Blackfoot heritage, she is not allowed to claim Blackfoot as a nationality and is left in the “no man’s land” between borders until the media finally pressures the authorities to allow the two to cross. This story makes a very strong statement about the Native Americans and their fight for autonomy and identity while living as part of another nation.

"Borders," written by Thomas King, is aptly named since the majority of the plot takes place on the Canadian-American border and since readers are encouraged to consider the implications of instituting strict borders. The narrator and his mother are dual Blackfoot Indian and Canadian citizens, and thus they are able to freely to pass between these two places. Trouble arises when they attempt to cross from Canada to the United States; the mother identifies solely as Blackfoot and relays this to border agents, who refuse to accept her answer and will not let the travelers pass.

The narrator and his mother are trapped in a place of limbo between borders for several days, unable to enter the US or reenter Canada until news media arrives and they are at last permitted to continue their journey. The two borders crossed in the story have drastically different implications for the travelers; the first is inconsequential since it does not challenge the mother's identity, whereas the second demands that she fit into the mold of another culture and disrupts life for the small family. The story urges readers to ponder the very nature of borders, and important themes of identity, self-respect, and citizenship are all woven into the story's setting.