Two trans travellers witness a corpse at Niagara Falls but aren’t believed—an erasure mirroring colonial borders, exploited land, and bodies deemed unworthy of dignity.
I did not know it was one of the most frequented spots in the world for suicide. How could I have known that when a body surfaces near the commercial tour boats—an apparently common occurrence—a small tin boat simply tows it back to shore?
I arrived at Niagara Falls like any tourist: eager for the spectacle, ready to be awed. Seagulls wheeling overhead, concrete hot underfoot, the roar of water filling my skull.
This is what I learned: on a small hull next to the tour boat, a body was baking on the tin deck in the hot sun.
And the falls kept crashing. And the sun stayed bright and hot.
*****
It had begun as a camping trip with my partner and our friend in Allegheny National Forest, half a million acres of trails, serene waterways and hardwood forest in northeast Pennsylvania, nestled up against the borders of New York state and Lake Erie. From there, we made a day trip to Niagara Falls, driving due north through the rugged, piney body of New York State.
The process of parking and wading through tourists made me irritated and dissociative. Waiting in line for the tour boat to view the Falls, I felt myself withering from overstimulation, from the crowd, from the brightness of the sun. The roar of crashing water alone sent my head spinning: I could not fathom the magnitude of it.
The rough limestone cliffs, over which an impossible amount of water crashed in heavy, white swaths, were stark against the blackened underrock. Seagulls dotted the cliffside like dandelion fluff, their small white bodies following the winds as if they were only tufts of seed.
The beauty and horror of it disturbed me. I felt a kinship with Frederick Douglass’ account of the Falls and their significance to the Underground Railroad: “When I came into its awful presence the power of description failed me, an irresistible power closed my lips.” Because of its popularity as a tourist destination and its proximity to Canada, Niagara Falls had once been a beacon of freedom for slaves, but its power had nuance: it was a terrible reminder of the concocted lines and boundaries that section off this land and oppress its people.
The tour boat took us to the middle of Horseshoe Falls, which felt like a violation, a place where humans were not supposed to be permitted. The persistent mist, the waves spraying against my poncho, the impossible way the boat continued to inch forward even after I wished it had turned around—it was overstimulation as spectacle, a thunder that housed me inside it.
And then, as we exited the boat, all three of us soaked, feeling euphoric and terrible: there was the body.
My girlfriend saw it first. Impossibly, she waited to speak, not wanting me or our friend to see the corpse, desperately trying to prevent a panic. Finally, she leaned in, voice quavering: “I think I saw a body—”
There—on the tin vessel next to the tour boat—the body lay twisted. One leg jutted sideways from the life jacket. Where the other leg should have been: blood.
I waited for grief, my thoughts going to places of accidents and news articles. I felt sure they were in the process of closing the park, that we were being shuffled through an exit to avoid a stampede and the announcements closing off the area that would soon come.
Dizzy, my mind began constructing a story to make sense of the grisly scene: a young blonde girl, like those in the movies I watched as a child, the ones who have their legs eaten by sharks but keep surfing. My brain tried to put the leg back on the girl. I imagined an open casket, the family seeing her whole again.
Most of our fellow travellers were unaware. People smiled and posed for pictures. The man in line behind us heard my girlfriend, turned to his partner, and said, “That was just a total lie.”
My girlfriend and I are both visibly trans. This automatic denial felt eerily familiar—cis people assuming we’re dramatic, attention-seeking, lying about what we’ve seen.
Our own friend dismissed us too. She glanced over the observation tower for a split second: “It’s probably nothing.”
Nothing? I looked again, forcing myself to see: the blood, the twisted body, the undeniable corpse baking in the sun.
She changed the subject. We followed her out of the park in silence, thick with confusion and something worse—the grief of not being believed, even by the people closest to us.
*****
Back at the car, I pulled out my phone and started researching. So many casinos along the banks of the Niagara seemed to invite tragedy. I read that employees sign NDAs every year; I read accounts about how the estimated number of suicides (twenty-thirty per year) is grossly and purposefully underreported. Some say they find bodies almost every day.
The official explanation for this drastic underreporting is to prevent copycat suicides. The method does not seem to work in this way. In fact, the only benefit of hiding these numbers seems to be for the protection of the tourism-driven companies and businesses in the area.
On the way back to the campsite, we stopped at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, with its glittering glass dome as tall as a five-story building. Though none of us are religious, I needed to be held—by Mary, by Mother Earth, by something. The grounds were dotted with life-size statues of saints from around the world, their stone faces serene.
Archangel Gabriel clasped his hands before me. He clears mental blockages, I remembered. He wants us to trust our intuition, to see truth the way he announced it to Mary. The mistake people make, I thought, is believing God is separate from water, from bodies, from the truth of what we witness.
Gunshots cracked from a nearby shooting range, shattering the quiet. Pop—corpse. Pop—corpse. Each shot returned me to the twisted body, to the Trump signs in every garden: GUN OWNERS FOR TRUMP, TAKE AMERICA BACK. The marble crucifix was visible from every angle, Christ’s body splayed and broken. The wrong people are dying, I thought.
*****
Many trans people share stories of going to a doctor with something provable—a broken arm, say—and being referred to a psychiatrist. We’re assumed to be unreliable narrators, either confused about reality or intentionally lying. At Niagara Falls, this familiar dynamic played out again: my girlfriend and I were hypervisible as trans people, yet what we experienced became invisible.
We couldn’t cross the border to Canada that day, though our cis friend could have. Without passports—nearly impossible for trans people to obtain under the current administration—we’re trapped in a country that simultaneously hyperscrutinizes and dismisses us. We’re visible enough to be controlled, invisible enough to be disbelieved.
The grief of what we had seen felt like an injury no one would acknowledge. Everyone wants their memories, their pictures, their country intact. Everyone keeps trying to put the leg back on the girl.
*****
Back at the campsite, bulletin boards detailed the construction of the Kinzua Dam we were camping beside. The U.S. government forcibly removed hundreds of Seneca families from land promised to Cornplanter and his descendants “forever.” Fertile lands were flooded, bodies exhumed and relocated, people driven to New York State and forced to abandon traditional ways of life. All to build one dam. We had driven through these displaced communities on our way to Niagara Falls; we were sleeping on the stolen tract.
“Forever” lasted until colonisers wanted the land. Colonisation doesn’t end with land theft or genocide—it extends into death itself. Who gets to die with dignity, who gets memorialised, who is believed when they witness a tragedy. People throw themselves over the Falls after losing everything. A poor body is not treated with respect; a powerless death is disregarded.
My family, an Ohio branch of the Chestnut Ridge People, was denied clean water for generations for having brown skin and Indigenous blood. I paid hours of minimum wage to ride a tour boat built on stolen land where countless generations suffered. The tour company left a corpse exposed in the sun rather than disrupt the spectacle.
Far away, the Falls keep crashing. Fresh water rushes over limestone, an unceasing thunder. Once, Niagara was one huge waterfall—all that matter flowing together despite borders, despite economy, despite the lines we draw to control each other. The Falls are slowly eroding, worn down by the diversion of water for profit. Even this will not last forever.
Against my will, my mind tries to bury what I saw. Dissociation softens the memory like mist. But I will not let myself forget.
The people in power tell trans people we are confused, that we’re lying about what we know is true. They told the Seneca that “forever” meant until they wanted the land. They hide bodies to protect the view.
But I saw that corpse, and I see this country for what it is—a place that will let you die and then erase your death to keep the tourists smiling.
