In Thomas King's short story "Borders," a Blackfoot mother struggles to maintain her cultural heritage under the pressure of two dominant nations. The narrative is important, both to the mother and to the dominant white society. Stories are used to maintain and transmit cultural information and customs from one generation to the next. Furthermore, stories can be used both positively and negatively. They can trap individuals in certain ways of thinking, but they can also act as catalysts that drive social change within society. Stories are a means of transmitting information, acting as a means of carrying cultural heritage and customs into the future. In his essay titled "You'll Never Believe What Happened," King states that "The truth about stories is that this is all we are" (King Essay 2). Contained in this statement is a powerful truth: without stories, a society transcending the limits of time could not exist. Cultures might appear, but they would inevitably die without a means of preservation. Subsequent generations would be tasked with creating language, customs, and moral laws, all from scratch the core of society's existence. Humans are the vessels of stories, responsible for ensuring that knowledge accumulated over many centuries does not disappear. However, the very fact that stories continue to live in humans can be problematic five people in the world who knew English, and these people died without having taught anyone else the language, then English would disappear with them; this is the dilemma the Blackfoot mother faces right before Laetitia leaves for Salt Lake City, with whom the mother is speaking. Although the mother speaks... middle of paper... perceptions that their ancestors had centuries before. Stories are not set in stone and this means that all stories, even the most powerful ones, can be changed. The Blackfoot mother refuses to accept the prevailing stories that society imposes on her, and as a result, her access across the border is limited. But by persisting for a viable third alternative, the mother is able to shape society's dominant assumptions. She tells her own counter-narratives, introducing “an alternative to the narratives of the nations that [she] refuses to acknowledge” (Andrews and Walton 609). It presents a story capable of altering the metanarrative that governs Canada and America; the mother manages to change the fundamental beliefs of both societies, and is able to free Canadians and Americans from the restrictive and dichotomous way of thinking.