The evolution of the Canada–US borderland in the Pacific Northwest included the wholesale transformation of social organization and individual identities together with the redefinition and application of public power. Before and After the State examines the impact of those changes across a region that already harboured a vibrant, highly complex mélange of societies with dynamic local, regional, and global trade and kin networks. Allan McDougall, Lisa Philips, and Daniel Boxberger explore fundamental questions of state formation, social transformation, and the (re)construction of identity to expose the narratives and other devices of nation building, their impact on generations caught in the transition, and the reverberations of those national myths that continue to the present.