Surveillance, measurement, judgment, and reform : Indian reserves in the British Columbia interior and the Panoptic mechanism
Date
1996
Authors
Smith, Keith D. (Keith Douglas)
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Abstract
This thesis examines the nature of the surveillance of Native peoples in the British Columbia interior in the early twentieth century. Drawing on Michel Foucault's use of the "panopticon" as an instrument of observation and normalization, Indian reserves are investigated as "laboratories of reform" that were isolated from the outside population while at the same time open to the light of inspection. While the federal government intended to measure and judge all aspects of Native peoples' lives to a degree unprecedented in Canadian history as part of its "civilizing" project, this study focuses primarily on economic activity. Every cent earned from wage labour, hunting and fishing, and the agricultural produce of each reserve was recorded in incredible detail and used to compare each group with its neighbours and to judge its relative level of "advancement". It is in economic activity, as well, where resistance during this period is particularly evident.