Surveillance, Containment, and the Establishment of Indian Reserves in Canada

Abstract

Drawing on work done in anti-colonial theory and surveillance studies, this paper aims to examine the realities and implications of historical and ongoing settler colonial surveillance assemblages. I focus on the paradoxical nature of settler state surveillance to argue that surveillance is used as a tool of the colonial project with its goals of erasure and invisibilization of Indigenous people, while at the same time a racialized surveillance functions to render Indigenous people as hyper visible. My aim with this paper is to unsettle the ways in which systems of surveillance, containment, and categorization are often taken for granted or naturalized. I hope to foster critical dialogue and questions to carry these ideas further.