The Violence Within: Canadian Modern Statehood and the Pan-territorial Residential School System Ideal

Abstract

Drawing upon Walter Benjamin's “principle of montage,” this article excavates the political salience of what is referred to herein as the residential school system's “pan-territorial ideal.” The pan-territorial ideal materialized in 1930 with the opening of the Shubenacadie Residential School in the Maritimes, the system's final frontier. It was envisioned, forged and secured, in part, with the overt understanding that so called Indian education could be used as a vector of violence to control Indigenous peoples and their lands. This history clashes with dominant narratives that interpret residential school system violence as the product of mismanagement and neglect. From the early days of Confederation to its almost full legal autonomy from Britain in the early twentieth century and beyond, the Dominion's pursuit of the pan-territorial vision involved the selective harnessing of the residential school system as a field of state-sanctioned force to quell Indigenous resistance. In this, residential school violence cannot be reduced to a deviation from the norm. In crucial respects, it was an inherent feature of the system and Canadian modern statehood itself.

The Future of Canadian Political Science: Boundary Transgressions, Gender and Anti-Oppression Frameworks

“…Returning to these abstracts but using the terms (and their derivatives): oppression, dominance, settler colonialism, colonization, exploitation, marginalization, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, heteronormativity, homonormativity, racism, poverty, settler, privilege, whiteness, white supremacy, intersectional, resistance, justice, liberation, Indigenous, citizenship, anti-oppression, and Aboriginality, yielded 22 more articles in CJPS/RCSP. Articles in CJPS/RCSP and CPSR that adopt an intersectional antioppression approach disrupt specific concepts that have defined CPS including, but not limited to, identity (Hakivinsky and Dhamoon, 2013;Nath, 2011;Page, 2017;Thompson, 2008), Aboriginality (Ladner, 2017;Lugosi, 2011, D. MacDonald, 2007Murray, 2017;Panagos, 2007), sovereignty (Bruyneel, 2010;Green 2001Green , 2006Hudon, 2017;Voth, 2016), mobilization (Tungohan, 2017) and equality (Abu-Laban and Couture, 2010;Hakivinsky, 2005Hakivinsky, , 2012. While these concepts are an intrinsic part of CPS and are discussed extensively in CJPS/RCSP and CPSR, analysis typically reproduces structural forms of power inside and outside the discipline.…”

“…Articles in CJPS/RCSP and CPSR that adopt an intersectional anti-oppression approach disrupt specific concepts that have defined CPS including, but not limited to, identity (Hakivinsky and Dhamoon, 2013; Nath, 2011; Page, 2017; Thompson, 2008), Aboriginality (Ladner, 2017; Lugosi, 2011, D. MacDonald, 2007; Murray, 2017; Panagos, 2007), sovereignty (Bruyneel, 2010; Green 2001, 2006; Hudon, 2017; Voth, 2016), mobilization (Tungohan, 2017) and equality (Abu-Laban and Couture, 2010; Hakivinsky, 2005, 2012). While these concepts are an intrinsic part of CPS and are discussed extensively in CJPS/RCSP and CPSR , analysis typically reproduces structural forms of power inside and outside the discipline.…”

The Structural Injustice Turn, the Historical Justice Dilemma and Assigning Responsibility with the Canadian TRC Report

“…I am aware of only two treatments, both of which lament the impact of the commission's victim-centred approach on its historical clarification work 6 . Historian Brian Gettler (2017) criticizes the report for ignoring regional variations in residential schooling (but see, by way of comparison, Murray, 2017) and for neglecting other Canadian institutions that sought coercively to assimilate Indigenous children. These omissions, Gettler argues, were the residue of the civil claims process, which required Survivors to present residential schooling as an invariant national system responsible for their losses.…”

Epigenetics and Politics in the Colonial Present

“…The EDI, as a mediating device for the epigenetic style of thought, relates to the intertwined dynamics of population management and territorial control in specific ways in the settler-colonial context of Canada, which has long and well-documented record of forcibly removing Indigenous children from their communities, at times with fatal consequences (Murray 2017;Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2015).…”

“…The CIS also included a question about the caregiver or the caregiver's parent's attendance at residential schools (CIS-2008). Between 1876 and 1996, one hundred and fifty thousand Indigenous Peoples were sent to residential schools, which were rife with neglect and abject violence resulting in thousands of deaths, often expressly recognized by the Government of Canada (Murray 2017;Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015). As Sindha et al (2018) point out, "the choice to focus research on the overrepresentation of any group indicates an implicit concern that child welfare engagement may be harmful, inappropriate, or not meeting the needs of members of the overrepresented group" (19).…”