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Distributed for Athabasca University Press

Liberalism, Surveillance, and Resistance

Indigenous communities in Western Canada, 1877-1927

Canada is regularly presented as a country where liberalism has ensured freedom and equality for all. Yet with the expansion of settlers into the First Nations territories that became southern Alberta and BC, liberalism proved to be an exclusionary rather than inclusionary force. Between 1877 and 1927, government officials, police officers, church representatives, ordinary settlers, and many others operated to exclude and reform Indigenous people. Presenting Anglo-Canadian liberal capitalist values and structures and interests as normal, natural, and beyond reproach devalued virtually every aspect of Indigenous cultures. This book explores the means used to facilitate and justify colonization, their effects on Indigenous economic, political, social, and spiritual lives, and how they were resisted.

256 pages | © 2009


Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Liberal Surveillance Complex

Chapter 2: The Transformation of Indigenous Territory

Chapter 3: Churches, Police Forces, and the Department of Indian Affairs

Chapter 4: Disciplinary Surveillance and the Department of Indian Affairs

Chapter 5: The British Columbia Interior and the Treaty 7 Region to 1877

Chapter 6: The British Columbia Interior, 1877 to 1927

Chapter 7: The Treaty 7 Region After 1877

Chapter 8: Exclusionary Liberalism in World War I and Beyond

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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