Atopoi of the ModerModern:n: RRevisitingevisiting the Place of the Indian Residential School Geoffrey Carr University of British Columbia
,, off ered a formal Oapology to the Indigenous peoples of Canada for the federal government’s imposition of the Indian Residential School () system. is long-awaited gesture of contrition was proff ered in the wake of a multibillion dollar reparation package and the inception of a fi ve-year Truth and Reconcili- ation Commission (). Increasingly, governments across the globe are partaking in the politics of regret, and as a consequence more scrutiny has fallen on the form and content of what are now called symbolic reparations: off ering public apologies; expunging off ensive names attached to institu- tions, buildings, and streets; constructing commemorative museums; and commissioning memorials. One of the more persistent critiques of such symbolic reparations is the way in which they sublimate and compartmentalize the pain of mass social trauma.¹ is tendency appears in postapology sound bites circulating in For the scope and implications of symbolic reparations see Ana Cutter Patel, Pablo de Greiff , and Lars Waldorf, eds., Disarming the Past ()() and Bran- don Hamber and Ingrid Palmary, “Gender, Memorialization, and Symbolic Reparations” in Ruth Rubio-Martin, ed., e Gender of Reparations (). For critiques see John Torpey, Making Whole What Has Been Smashed () and Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts ().
ESC .. (Mar(Marchch ):): –– the Canadian media, encouraging the nation to “turn the page on this pain- ful history.” In this way, the offi cial politics of regret in Canada produces a disquieting sense that the teleological ends of the democratic nation- G C is a state may yet be realized. is offi cial narrative suggests that although doctoral candidate in founded on colonial violence, the nation is at last moving to its logical the Department of Art conclusion—a fair, open, and tolerant society. To date, however, most talk History, Visual Art, and of reconciliation, from church and state, has shied away from the more eory at the University burning questions raised by the spectre of the schools: how to prosecute of British Columbia. His off enders, determine if crimes against humanity have occurred, or reas- research interests include sess how this history impacts the legitimacy of Canadian sovereignty. is art and architecture general silence stands in sharp contrast to the objections raised by critics, of the nineteen and many of them Indigenous, who ask these same diffi cult questions. In this twentieth centuries, way, the narrative structure of “turning the page” threatens to foreclose memorialization, an unfl inching struggle with our colonial past and present. heritage, and the In this article, I will attempt to complicate such facile reconciliatory discourses of social narratives by examining the design and construction of Indian Residential reconciliation. His Schools to outline this architecture’s function in the application of the dissertation examines so-called civilizing process and in the disruption of the political, social, the architectural history and cultural life of Canada’s Indigenous populations. My analysis focuses of the Indian residential in particular on the historical and present-day operation of St Eugene, school system in British the once–Indian Residential School now luxury resort, located in Cran- 2 Columbia. brook, British Columbia (fi gures and ). I contend that the study of the
Figure 1. Architectural plan: St Eugene Indian Residential School, 1911, Allan Keefer, architect. Façade elevation. © Indian and Northern Aff airs. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2009). Source: Library and Archives Canada / Indian and Northern Aff airs / RG22M 77803 / 111 Item 1067. St Eugene, designed by the prominent architect Allan Keefer, was erected be- tween and . Its doors closed in .
| Carr | Figure . Architectural plan: St Eugene Indian Residential School, , Allan Keefer, architect. Ground fl oor. © Indian and Northern Aff airs. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (). Source: Library and Archives Canada / Indian and Northern Aff airs / RGM / Item .
building’s design, siting, and program, the policies guiding its operation, as well as the present repurposing of this institution, reveal much about the governmental rationality that informed the construction of a second generation of residential schools—focussed on segregating the unassimi- lable—and much about the profoundly complicated reconciliation process now underway in Canada as well.³ Dakota historian Waziyatawin has suggested that “no one will be committed to righting the wrongs if they cannot recognize and name those wrongs” (). I contend that part of this recognition and naming requires a rethinking of the specifi c material and spatial operation of this architecture, to understand the particular and localized means of enacting policy. I argue further that thinking through the buildings of the residential school system, a project toward
Day schools and industrial schools could be described as belonging to the fi rst generation of Indian schools, designed to hasten full assimilation, whereas the second generation residential schools, built between the s and the early s, served a segregationist program. See John S. Milloy’s A National Crime ().
| Atopoi of the Modern | which this paper only makes an initial gesture, comprises an important part of the truth telling process and, by default, any eff ectual expression of contrition. To date there have been no scholarly studies of the design, siting, scale, and programmatic use of the built fabric of the residential school system nor of the relations between this infrastructure and the policies and prac- tices guiding their operation. I argue that these institutions were not mere containers in which the policies and practices of Indian education were enacted but, rather, that their designs helped to produce spatialities that disrupted Indigenous senses of place and identity. is spatial theorization, despite its debt to Henri Lefebvre, is informed mainly by Michel Foucault’s thought on governmentality and Giorgio Agamben’s work on biopolitics, the citizen, and those others reduced to “bare life,” to the margins of “legitimate” society. Agamben’s notion of exception, of the displacement of subjects beyond the margins of the law and, thus, the threshold of meaningful sociality, becomes spatialized through study of the form and structure of the Indian Residential School. Referring to these carceral spaces as “schools” fl attens the particular nature of these institutions by applying a euphemism that often implies salubrity and self-improvement. Instead I propose alternate terminology that self-consciously intervenes into the received nomenclature and social memory of this violent colonial past. rough this analysis, I suggest that these structures should not be considered schools per se but, rather, engines or factories of modern colonialism, whose walls bounded an atopos, a non-place. ese atopoi of the modern—a play on Agamben’s “nomos of the modern”—comprise places without place, places without memory, (non)places both outside yet implicated in the juridical order of the state and the sociocultural bounds of Indigenous communities. Whereas Agamben theorizes how sovereign states generally require the power to enact exceptions to nomos (law) in order to maintain integrity, I argue that the Canadian state required the production of spatial exceptions to the perceived, bounded integrity of the “civilized” nation and that these exceptions (atopoi) required the con- struction of a particular architectural form. In Mark Rifkin’s examination of the relation between U.S. Indian Policy, reservations, and American sovereignty, he critiques Agamben’s tendency to attend to biopolitics “at the expense of a discussion of geopolitics, [so that] the production of race supplant[s] the production of space as a way of envisioning sovereignty” (). is article extends the critique of Agamben’s model of sovereign exception to consider in particular the geopolitical implications of institu- tional structures of Indigenous education in Canada. at said, this paper
| Carr | does not comprise a straightforward architectural analysis of St Eugene. Rather, it traces a discursive path from general to specifi c and back, the building providing a means to instantiate more general concerns of policy and practice and, at the same time, the details of its construction and design that off er a view on the materiality of this institution and its particular part in the exercise of governmentality. e subsequent aim of this diachronic study is to question to what degree the material remnants of these former institutions (at St Eugene and elsewhere) will alter the telling of Canada’s colonial past. How, if at all, will this built fabric be incorporated into the canon of national heritage or historic sites?⁴ To this end, I highlight the uncomfortable fi t between those mnemonic bureaucracies charged with preserving national memory (such as Parks Canada or the National Historic Sites and Monuments Board) and the “diffi cult heritage” presented by the detritus of the Indian Residential School system. Heritage preservation remains especially diffi cult with such unreconciled pasts, especially as a wide variety of social actors (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) hold diff ering and often confl icting opinions on how to strike an appropriate balance between commemoration and demolition/ forgetting. Moreover, some critics charge that “heritage redress”—ame- lioration of social ills through commemoration—appears little more than “multiculturalism in the service of neoliberalism” and saps momentum from social movements seeking more substantive change (James ). To complicate matters further, some advocacy groups, such as the Interna- tional Center for Transitional Justice as well as the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, maintain that heritage redress (a form of symbolic reparations) serves an important purpose when used in conjunction with other forms of transitional or restorative justice.
Naming Wrongs A brief sketch should be made here of the relation between state policy and the architectural interventions advanced by government into Indig- enous territories in British Columbia. In his seminal text Making Native Space, geographer Cole Harris makes clear the importance of architecture in the establishment of colonial hegemony in this western province. He quotes an early colonist, English businessman Gilbert Malcolm Sproat,
It bears mentioning that several other residential schools in British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada are being reused and repurposed in a variety of ways not expounded upon in this paper. For example, former schools now house Band administrative offi ces, classrooms, and facilities for day care, addiction treatment centres, First Nations colleges, and community colleges.
| Atopoi of the Modern | who relates how rapid was the pace of development in the territory of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth First Nations on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. “A civilized settlement,” Sproat recounts, “was formed almost immediately in The residential their midst, and the natives stared at the buildings, wharves, [and] steam engines [...] which they had never seen before” (xvi). is passage inti- schools thus mates how in the settler imaginary, from the earliest moments of colonial exchange, the built world of settler culture indexed both the perceived functioned as spread of civilization and the assumed state of Indigenous barbarity. Since the s, various departments entrusted with the Indian Aff airs portfo- a node within lio have brought this architectural presence to bear on most aspects of Indigenous life, producing a bewildering variety of architectural designs. an extensive e Indian Residential School represents the apex of this building pro- gram, yet many structures likewise were devised, ranging from industrial network of schools, day schools, community centres, and agents’ houses to bungalows, furniture, and even outhouses. e residential schools thus functioned government as a node within an extensive network of government architectures, an infrastructural system built to pacify the nation’s Indigenous communities architectures, an by enforcing changes to land-use practices: assigning reserves, parceling and fencing land, abolishing communal structures, building single-family infrastructural dwellings, constructing roads and wharves, and so on. What is at stake, then, in examining the architectural form of the system built is the discernment of governmental rationality, or “governmentality,” the portmanteau devised by Michel Foucault to include both the function of to pacify the the state and a broader set of power relations. is productive neologism suggests a strategic fi eld of power relations that acts not only on but also nation’s through the subject, wherein power becomes internalized, sedimented, performative, and thus a question also of the relationship of a perceived Indigenous self to itself (Kelly ). Foucault also accounts for shifting forms of gov- ernance—from a defensive, Machiavellian mode meant to stabilize the communities always unsteady territory of the Prince to an “art of government” reliant upon the economic model of the familial household concerned with “men by enforcing and things” and then to a “science” of government built on statistical analyses of populations (births, disease, deaths, wages, marriages, etc.). changes to land- is latter form facilitates a science of political economy attending to “the perception of new networks of continuous and multiple relations between use practices. population, territory, and wealth” (). Of particular interest here is the exception to Foucault’s theorization of governance, more specifi cally those spaces of exception to the wider arena where the displaced model of domestic economy or the statistically informed management of “men and
| Carr | things” is the rule, spaces characterized by “residual themes of a religious and moral nature,” as he observes in an off hand way (). e and the laws governing Indigenous peoples in Canada rely on a pernicious paternalism not seen in the “science of government” as applied to the bulk of the nation’s population. is distinction between the parental “governing of souls and lives” and the much more indirect bureau- cratic management of systems of power relations informs my analysis of the as a space of exception, as atopos, as zones of exclusion included in—while quarantined from—those networks of places for citizens. Just as, for Agamben, the ability to designate a state in which the application of the law is suspended is in fact an originary, foundational “exception,” upon which the whole juridical order and the legitimacy of sovereignty power depends, I see the “exceptional,” paternalistically governed spaces of the residential schools as pivotal to the governmental mapping of a wider space, outside of these zones of paternalism, for a freely self-governing Canadian citizenry. To date, survivor testimonies, from damning to laudatory in their rep- resentations of the experience of residential schooling, provide the most crucial coordinates to map the fi eld of power relations operating in these spaces.⁵ Yet personal accounts, owing to their subjective and confl icting nature, tend to divert attention away from the as instruments of gov- ernment policy. Moreover, the fact that some students genuinely praise the schools has lent weight to apologist refutations and to dismissals of the trauma suff ered by most in these structures as mere “psychodrama,” as something to “get over.”⁶ Roland Chrisjohn and Tanya Wasacase suggest survivor testimony poses similar problems for the impending : We have no doubt that the Indigenous people who testify at the forthcoming sessions will be telling the truth, and nothing but the truth. ey cannot, however, tell the whole truth, which resides, in our best guess, in Cabinet documents, memoranda of agreement, consultation documents, and the minds and
For a small sample of autobiographical accounts from residential school survi- vors, see Elizabeth Furniss, Victims of Benevolence (), Elizabeth Graham, e Mush Hole (), Agnes Jack, ed., Behind Closed Doors (), Basil Johnson, Indian School Days (), Isabelle Knockwood, Out of the Depths (), Sylvia Olsen, No Time to Say Goodbye (), and Shirley Sterling, My Name is Seepeetza (). For examples of positive testimony see Terry Glavin, Amongst God’s Own (), Jack, Behind Closed Doors , and omas A. Lascelles, Roman Catholic Indian Residential Schools in British Columbia ().
| Atopoi of the Modern | hearts of people who cannot be compelled to be open and honest. () My contention is that analysis of the architecture of the Indian Residential School system allows for a shift in critique, so that personal narratives of trauma are set alongside the materialization, in built structures, of policies intended to govern Indigenous peoples. A lack of access to archival material that would precisely outline the aims of staff architects employed by the Department of Indian Aff airs () vexes research into the architectural history of this system. e vast majority of documents held in federal, provincial, regional, and church archives remains restricted. Many documents have been culled by the various departments in charge of the Indian Aff airs portfolio. In spite of these limitations, the perceptible function of the residential school struc- tures, which can be read in materials and architectural layouts, off ers a crucial, supplemental means to spatially map policies meant to evacuate the ontological and epistemic integrity of Indigenous societies. First, the incongruous materials used to erect the divorced them from sur- rounding structures and topographies. Typically, brick was the preferred material to raise the exterior and interior walls.⁷ Especially on the west coast of Canada, where brick was rarely used, its alien, immovable, and instrumental appearance cultivated a certain institutional awe and, thus, a sense of unfamiliarity and dislocation. Moreover, the replicated these carceral edifi ces based on a template that remained largely unchanged regardless of the particular physical, social, or cultural geography into which they were inserted. e sheer scale of the structures seems designed to produce a sense of fear and domination in the minds of the young students, as commonly these would be the largest buildings in the region. Indeed, St Eugene remained the largest structure in this area of British Columbia for several decades. Consider as well the overarching aim of the system. Cree scholar Linda Bull has noted how, unlike most boarding schools in this period that indoctrinated students into standards and competencies relevant to their culture, the residential schools—by displacing Indigenous families, language, cultures, religions, and economies—functioned specifi cally to do the opposite (). is is not to dismiss other forms of violence endemic to other boarding schools. Indeed in England much has been made in recent years of the trauma inherent in the English public school model, owing to the separation from parents, harsh discipline, hazing, and sexual abuse St Eugene used rock-faced concrete blocks for the exterior walls and brick for interior walls.
| Carr | (Duff el). Signifi cantly, however, institutions such as St Eugene often were constructed in remote locations or in areas that had few or no traditional associations. Hayter Reid, a senior offi cial in the Department of Indian Aff airs, claimed that “the more remote the institutions and the greater distance are the points from which pupils are collected, the better for success” (quoted in Milloy ). In this way the residential school can be seen as one of a number of architectural and land-use instruments meant to extend the civilizing process through isolation and individuation. is isolating logic also operated within St Eugene by segregating students according to gender and age. Boys were confi ned to one wing of the H- shaped structure, and girls to the other—the eldest housed in dormitories on the top fl oor and the youngest on a lower fl oor. e centre block typi- cally housed administrative offi ces and staff chambers, which remained off limits to students, barred by locked doors. is alienating scheme would be repeated with little variation throughout the system, disrupting family and community ties, as estranged brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends would receive punishment for attempting to communicate.⁸ Additional barriers were imposed between students and their families through restrictive visiting privileges, compounded by the often prohibi- tive travel distance required of parents. Paternalistic governmentality was also enacted through tightly supervised visits conducted in the so-called Indians Parlour (or Indians Room). ese purpose-built rooms served to limit physical and visual access to the institution, as well as to ensure that no Indigenous languages were spoken between visitants (fi gure , see over). Visiting family would enter the parlour directly through an outside doorway, whereas children would enter via an interior door made acces- sible to their assigned pavilion by a hallway or adjacent room. e parlour off ered no sightlines into the school, and visiting family members were prevented from entering the main doors of the institution. is move to isolate students from their families and home communities takes on signifi cant political dimensions in light of the fact that many in the Depart- ment of Indian Aff airs considered such isolation essential to the colonial project to subvert ancestral political structures, cultural practices, and economies. For example, in his campaign to uproot potlatch practices on the west coast, Indian Agent W. M. Halliday (Kwagieulth Agency) stated
In a personal interview, survivor Adeline Brown has pointed out that the individual bed to which a child was assigned represented the fi rst implement of isolation, as most children previously would have shared sleeping space, and thus also bodily warmth and haptic comfort, with siblings. Signifi cantly, dorms were notoriously cold.
| Atopoi of the Modern | Figure 3. Architectural plan: Kuper Island Residential School, c. 1913, R.G. Orr, architect. Detail, ground fl oor. © Indian and Northern Aff airs. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 2009. Source: Library and Archives Canada / Indian and Northern Aff airs / RG22M 77803 / 111 Item 844.
bluntly the need to keep pupils “entirely away from the home infl uence of the parents during the greater part of the year,” so that each ex-student would become a “link in the chain between barbarism and civilization” (Dominion , ). at same year, Indian Agent omas Deasy (Queen Charlotte Agency) went further, arguing for compulsory attendance, to ameliorate the wrongs caused primarily by a lack of parental discipline.⁹ Deasy argued that “where the Indian is allowed to do as he likes ... and go where he pleases, without restraint, he will not only pick up the vices of his forefathers; but will endeavour to follow in the footsteps of those associating with him” (). Intensive inculcation of Christian beliefs was likewise regarded as key to the detachment of Indigenous children from their ancestral lifeworld, and the ubiquitous insertion of a chapel in each school, regardless of denomination, underscores the perceived importance of such religious training (fi gure ).¹⁰ As early as , Prime Minister John A. Macdon- By , with amendments to the Indian Act, compulsory attendance became law. Four denominations managed residential schools. e Roman Catholic Church was the most heavily involved, followed by the Church of England, the United
| Carr | Figure 4. View of renovated chapel at rear of main building. Geoff rey Carr.
ald stated that “secular education is a good thing among white men but among Indians the fi rst object is to make them good Christian men by applying proper moral restraints” (quoted in Milloy ). At the dedica- tion ceremony for St Eugene in , a Reverend Beck noted that “the true Christian made the best man” and further that Ktunaxa parents should “realize their responsibility to see that their children enjoyed the privilege of training” at the fl edgling institution (quoted in Cranbrook ). Such sentiments were echoed by other church and government offi cials, many citing the perceived laxness, ineff ectiveness, and even satanic dangers of Indigenous religion and philosophical thought. In reality, however, despite such sensationalistic exclamations, the relationship between Indigenous peoples and settler cultures was, and still is, enormously complex, with meaningful and lasting exchanges of many important ideas and beliefs. Yet despite these nuances each school was fi tted with a permanent, attached facility for the Christian indoctrination of students. e chapel also proved useful for meting out discipline, as students regardless of age or gender were assembled together and could collectively
Church, and the Presbyterian Church.
| Atopoi of the Modern | witness humiliations visited on those who transgressed institutional rules. An anonymous Shuswap informant using the pseudonym Sophie describes how the chapel was the site where daily a priest “interrogated us on what it was all about being an Indian,” promising that students “would go to hell and burn for eternity if we did not listen to their way of teaching” (Haig- Brown ). Students caught speaking or laughing were forced to leave the pew to lie on the chapel fl oor until the end of service (Haig-Brown ). Survivor Ralph Sandy recounts how, in order to punish escape attempts, staff would “shave all the [student’s] hair and they gave you short pants and they make you kneel down in the church altar in front of everybody that’s in the church there. Don’t matter who’s in the church, but you had to kneel down in front and let everybody see you” (Jack ). In this way, the design of the chapel—gathering both genders, closely controlling comportment and gazes, policing silence, and housing the most sacred rituals—produced a ceremonial space of divinely authorized punishment, a theatre of corpo- real discipline that for the most part comes to be seen as illegitimate and backward, with the invention and proliferation of more indirect or liberal means of managing the conduct of populations. e disjunction between the backward, spectacularized, and punitive religiousity enforced in the chapel and other aspects of typical school design that stressed the modern goal of individuation (through separation from kin outside of the school and the dissolving of kin connections within it) point to the recourse to a diversity of tactics in the . Despite accounts of abuse and humiliation, however, more than a few survivors remain devout Christians and praise the religious training they received while attending the . Such enduring faith seems coun- terintuitive, yet it would be profoundly insulting and simpleminded to label it mere false consciousness. is many-sided history gains further complexity from the fact that a number of principals, priests, ministers, nuns, teachers, and staff were well-intentioned, caring people, who were accepted in Indigenous communities and fought for better treatment of children at the schools. It is precisely the existence of these sorts of confl icting accounts and the ambiguities they introduce to a dominant narrative of the that justify the attention to architectural design that I propose. By thinking through the paternalistic governmentality of these confi ning institutions, a new set of criteria for study emerges, suggesting that success or failure in coping with institutional life depended not only on a student’s extant constitution but also on contingencies, on luck, on the particular contact points within these carceral spaces to which stu- dents found themselves subjected.
| Carr | is is doubtless the case with those more cloistered spaces that pro- vided the fecund ground for the hypertrophic growth of what has been referred to as “institutionalized pedophilia.”¹¹ I am not suggesting that such spaces by themselves produce such criminality but, rather, that they function as an architectural component in a larger cluster of social con- ditions including the racialization of children, class-based vulnerabilities, as well as the sort of authority granted to religious and lay staff at the . Not surprisingly, sexual abuse occurred most often in those rooms far removed from circulation.¹² Subterranean spaces, laundry rooms, boiler rooms, storage rooms, etc., hold an especially fraught place in the imagi- nary of many survivors, the dimensions of these spaces made all the more monstrous and uncanny by real threats of harm from sinister guardians. Pondering such harrowing, abusive encounters may produce a sense of phenomenological aversion on the part of those who would witness the testimony of survivors and ponder the abject dread of the children. e aversion to (and, perhaps, concurrent fascination with and even titilla- tion by) such testimony, however, is always contaminated by and fi ltered through gothic narratives and conventions—haunting, villainy, despoiled innocence, dissociative trances, and so on. While recognition of the medi- ating work of gothic conventions and awareness of the operation of such genre expectations may, to a degree, diff use sensationalizing processes, it is worth noting the potential pitfalls of interpreting the experiences of Indigenous peoples through analytic frames such as the gothic, as it risks reinscribing the intellectual traditions of empire and settler cultures (Henderson ). Other spaces, including many rooms on upper fl oors, also presented opportunities for clandestine abuse—perhaps none more distorted in pur- pose than the monitor room (fi gure , see over). is chamber, operated by adults (religious or lay staff ) was designed to survey student dorms to ensure obedience and safety. ese small rooms also served as covert sites for pedophiles, as they were either near or in dormitories and often fi tted with doors and curtained windows. I am not contending that a clear inten- tion to abuse informs the design of the institutions. However, a dialectic is suggested here between the paternalistic governmentality that informed spaces and policies to correct and acculturate children through confi ne- ment, surveillance, corporeal punishment, and other coercive persuasions, on the one hand, and the extension of these practices into psychosexual Supreme Court Justice Douglas Hogarth used this term to describe Alberni Residential School during his sentencing of Arthur Henry Plint. See Graham , Jack , Knockwood .
| Atopoi of the Modern | Figure 5. Architectural plan: St Eugene Indian Residential School, 1911, Allan Keefer, architect. Detail, second fl oor. © Indian and Northern Aff airs. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 2009. Source: Library and Archives Canada / Indian and Northern Aff airs / RG22M 77803 / 111 Item 1068.
| Carr | abuse, on the other. Institutionalized power relations between adults and children in the residential school setting, supported by colonial racism, made relationships between children and their ostensible guardians vulnerable to all sorts of pathologies. is is not merely a case of neglect, as implied in Stephen Harper’s apology; it is a matter of the connection between such designs and the wider rationality of near-limitless authority to segregate and re-form Indigenous subjects that compelled and autho- rized the behaviour of social actors in the . is same dialectic, between design and compulsion/authorization, is evident in an inverse outcome: in certain instances, groups of students formed allegiances, facilitated by the open setting of the dorms, to resist the advances of nocturnal molesters by refusing to silently witness the abuse of another (Jack ). Perhaps owing to the recent notoriety of sexual abuse, one of the most overlooked functions of these institutions is the manner in which they advanced the liberal-capitalist ideology of settler culture and, further, how residential schools operated as sites meant to subvert alternative Indig- enous notions of accumulation and expenditure. Particularly helpful here is Foucault’s stress on the importance to governmentality of a notion of “economy,” by which he means “the correct manner of managing individu- als, goods and wealth within the family [... and] how to introduce this ... into the management of the state” (). In place of traditional knowledges, the state and church delivered a curriculum of rational economic con- duct. Instruction should inculcate faith not only in Christianity but also in “industry,” making each school a sort of Christian-capitalist industrial complex. Early reports of Indian Aff airs complain that the “naturally indo- lent character” of Canada’s Indigenous population poses a serious moral threat to the nation’s social fabric, and thus government was compelled to “break up the noxious system out of which so much evil grows, [as] no true civilization can prevail apart from labour” (Dominion , ). Although laziness was actively discouraged in Indigenous cultures, this deep-rooted settler stereotype of Aboriginal people persisted and, as con- sequence, informed the design of various sorts of training facilities in the (Lutz ). By the s, the had determined that its earlier eff orts at assimilation were prohibitively costly; it would be more economically feasible to convert Indigenous populations into an agrarian class and to sequester their communities on reserves. Accordingly, in purpose-built rooms, boys learned blacksmithing, farming, and carpentry while girls learned to sew, cook, and to maintain a hygienic household. In the fi rst decades of the , students spent half the day working and half receiving basic scholarly instruction, and this unpaid labour of children provided
| Atopoi of the Modern | crucial economic support to chronically underfunded schools. By-prod- ucts of this work, from growing crops, raising livestock, sewing garments, etc., not only fed and clothed staff and students but also provided goods for sale to neighbouring communities (Furniss ). Hereditary Chief Wedlidi Speck has noted that such atomised spaces The depth and and instrumental lessons were alien to children from Indigenous cultures, who traditionally received spiritual and technical instruction in mobile, variety of these multivalent spaces.¹³ Speck relates how this fracturing of community and of self from spirits and ancestors, the antithesis of practices in the sociocultural longhouse, prompted some, according to Speck, to refer to the as a “house of no spirit.” In this way, the architectural layout of these institu- dissocia- tions actively displaced an economic philosophy based on presumptions of spiritual interconnectedness, superabundance, practices of prodigal- tions require a ity, and communal ownership with a modern European model of private property, wage labour, and economic production and consumption. In rethinking of place of plenty, this economy has at its core the notion of limited resources, scarcity, and the abhorrence of waste—a model of productive rationality, the terms used wherein the subject becomes useful inasmuch as he or she fulfi ls a calculus of utility in the production of profi t for another. to describe these e depth and variety of these sociocultural dissociations require a rethinking of the terms used to describe these schools, and as I have sug- schools. gested, atopoi of the modern seems apt. Agamben refers to nomos (law) in his discussion of the dialectical relation between the stability of the modern, sovereign state and the opening of excluded zones, of “dislocating localization” (). Such localizations are often bounded by law, in that for legal and political systems to function they need both a constituent inside as well as an outside, set inclusions and exclusions (or more precisely, in Agamben’s terms, “exceptions” to the realm of the law).¹⁴ Agamben pro- poses the concentration camp as the most extreme exception, the sign of the “most absolute conditio inhumana” (). He cautions, however, that the camp is not an anomalous mutation but, rather, the “hidden matrix and nomos of the political space in which we are still living,” that “decisively signals the political space of modernity itself” (, ). us the inclusion of the citizen, of the body that matters in civic terms, relies upon the operation of such “dislocating localization,” reducing others to “bare life,” to bios, to a state of peril outside the protection of citizenship Personal interview, July . is runs counter to the theorization of Hannah Arendt in which she posits nomos as a spatialization of law that allows for the production of community ().
| Carr | and zoe (political life). Curiously, however, Agamben’s theorization of nomos—and its exception by “dislocating localization”—appears to over- look the importance of specifi c material and spatial confi gurations (the built environment) and the relation between assignment to bare life and the severing of layered connections to a particular place, not only socio- cultural but also geographic. Whereas Agamben regards the determinate factor in the produc- tion of spaces of exception to be the evacuation of protection under law, the logic of the Indian Residential School rests not only on that kind of legitimate parenthesis within the zone of rights but also on the profound evacuation of culturally and geographically embedded knowledges and narratives, on the production of atopoi, non-places. Indigenous commu- nities, as a consequence of sustained inhabitation, derived a great deal of their social cohesiveness and identity from a nested set of relations informed by topography, oral histories, seasonal travel, cultural practices, and religious ritual. e disrupted this cluster of comprehension both by the production of a physical space apart from ancestral communities but also with a narrative disjunction. But the picture is more complicated than this disruption, and the equivocal defi nition of the wordtopos helps to elucidate these nuances. In the most literal sense, topos translates from the original Greek as “place,” but it is not merely a place in the most literal sense of the word; it is also that sense of place used to anchor memory, as in the mnemonic techniques made famous by Simonides of Ceos. e term has also taken on an additional layer of meaning, that of a topic or motif providing a stable place within narratives, a point of return, a com- mon place, as it were, for a community sharing knowledge. Taken this way, a topos is both material and fi gurative, geographical and discursive. And thus the reverse, the atopos, is neither; it is a cipher of sorts, a non-place evacuating the mnemonic continuity of every sort of narrative emplot- ment: topographical, social, cultural, religious, economic, familial, and so on. ough it shares some similarities to utopia, an atopos promises no threshold of perfection or eternity, no ideal image of unity, only a space of dissolution meant to unmoor social, cultural, and psycho-geographical ties to place. In this light, what the national system of created was a set of non-places that were hardly schools; rather, these atopoi of the modern, in this sovereign state, not only excluded any Indigenous sense of place and belonging but also transformed and contained the idea of civilization into a bounded territory, into a place.
| Atopoi of the Modern | Repurposing Atopoi
St Eugene Resort is an exceptional instance of repurposing an Indian Residential School. Indeed, the resort’s promotional website, operated by the Ktunaxa Nation, describes the renovated site as “the only project in Canada where a First Nation decided to turn the icon of an often sad period of its history into a powerful economic engine by restoring an old Indian Residential school into an international destination resort” (St Eugene). St Eugene Resort is peculiar, not only for the tremendous amount of money invested and hopes pinned on its success but also for amount of media coverage it has received since its conversion. Clearly the site shares with all other former s a traumatic association for many for- mer students. Similarly all erstwhile s present ethical issues regarding how, or if, to mark and preserve these places still in the shadow of such troubling pasts. It is this combination of common and singular concerns evident at St Eugene that compound an already complex and compelling set of questions about the place of such historic sites in contemporary Canadian society. As part of the multiparty Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, the Canadian government allotted million for the Com- memoration Initiative, created to, among other things, “memorialize the [Indian] Residential School experience in a tangible and permanent way.”¹⁵ But a surprising silence accompanies this commitment to memorialisa- tion, a silence regarding how the sites of former residential schools should be acknowledged.¹⁶ I should be clear that I am not advocating that each of the school sites should be designated as historic sites or heritage properties. It is important, however, to note that no residential school has received federal designation. is in itself is not surprising as, by virtue of their raw and contested state, these institutions exist at the margin of the complex of places perceived to be of national, regional, or local importance. In , the Ktunaxa/Kinbasket Tribal Council () sought to des- ignate St Eugene as a site of “national architectural historic signifi cance” and subsequently, after this application was rejected, as a site of “national historic signifi cance.” e made these applications in the belief that
Details of the Initiative can be read at www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ai/rqpi/rcomm/ index-eng.asp. is total is a matter of dispute, and across the country survivors struggle to have their excluded institution included in the settlement to receive just com- pensation and their share of apology
| Carr | that designation would help attract outside investment and also in order to receive government funding from the National Cost-Sharing Program (Johnson ). Concurrent to these applications, plans were produced for a radical adaptive re-use project for the abandoned institution, including the construction of a golf course, a casino, and the conversion of the main building into a luxury resort. e application, subject to the guidelines specifi ed by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada ( ), was not approved, primarily for three reasons: fi rst, developers intended to alter the site too radically; second, the site did not satisfy any of the other criteria, established in by the Board, required to be declared a “school of national signifi cance”;¹⁷ and third, the Board appeared wary of commemorating a place that posed too many possible embarrassments for the government.¹⁸ Not only were revelations continuing to surface about abuse at Indian Residential Schools across Canada but also the was concerned about how the impending report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples would characterize the legacy of the system (). Indeed, the Issue Analysis report makes clear the care of the Board to avoid controversy under advisement of the Department of Indian and Northern Aff airs (). offi cials strongly urged that any initiatives regarding the possible commemoration of Aboriginal residential schools be delayed until the research studies and report of the [Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples] have been released to the public, as offi cial contact on this issue at this point in time could be misconstrued as forming part of the federal government’s response to the royal commission. According to an anonymous insider, the general feeling at the time was that “the Board had dodged a bullet.”¹⁹ Since that unsuccessful bid, the derelict institution and grounds under- went a major renovation, which converted the site into a luxury resort, golf course, and casino (fi gure , see over). is million repurposing has received federal funding, in excess of million from the Aboriginal Busi- criteria for designation must include one or more of the following: pres- ervation of structural integrity; that the school be representative of signifi cant changes or developments in educational practice or theory; that the structure be an especially important example of a particular architectural style relevant to Canadian architecture; that the school be associated with notable Canadian educators, prominent ex-students, or innovative teaching methods. policy for designating schools can be found at www.pc.gc.ca/clmhc- hsmbc/crit/crit_E.aspschools. August . Personal interview, May .
| Atopoi of the Modern | ness Canada Program, and in some rather sanguine projections the resort is expected to generate over million annually for a consortium of bands across the country.²⁰ In , when then Minister of Indian Aff airs and Northern Development () Robert Nault announced federal invest- ment in the redevelopment of St Eugene, he emphasized the following government aims: “[] is committed to improving the lives of First Nations people by fi nding ways of facilitating Aboriginal involvement in the larger-scale provincial economy [and] ... [t]hrough this initiative, the Ktunaxa Kinbasket Tribal Council has taken a vital step in becoming a full partner in British Columbia’s economic success” (Turtle). e rede- velopment of St Eugene has been touted by the federal government as a beacon signaling a new, more equitable relationship between Ottawa and the nation’s Indigenous peoples. Yet though this question of economic co-operation is of vital importance, it cannot be overlooked that at St Eugene the articulation of such economic issues becomes the condition for the exclusion of social memory. is atopos—this (non)place—only became a “place to be” when folded back into the economic system that initially produced the institution as a space of “dislocating localization.” It
Figure 6. St Eugene Golf Resort and Casino, Cranbrook, B.C. Geoff rey Carr. See the Indian and Northern Aff airs report, “St Eugene Mission Turned into Luxury Resort” ().
| Carr | becomes recognizable and of use value only by a radical repurposing, by a profound mnemonic reconfi guration, altering its function from a carceral institution charged with divesting people of culture and sovereignty to a luxury resort that aims to off er leisure pleasures to a largely uninformed public (fi gure ). Perhaps nowhere more than at the “Casino of the Rock-
Figure 7. View from third fl oor suite looking over the golf course. Geoff rey Carr.
| Atopoi of the Modern | ies” is it evident the extent to which economics prevailed over the content and form of the past. If, as the resort website claims, the renovation of St Eugene converted an “icon of an often sad period of history into a powerful economic engine,” the casino provides the necessary fuel for the continued operation of the entire complex. In an interview I conducted, Director of Sales and Marketing Wendy Van Puymbroeck confi rmed that, despite the substantial cut taken by the B.C. Lottery Corporation, the casino generated more profi ts than the resort and golf course combined. In order to change the institution into a viable business venture, the Ktunaxa had little choice but to eff ace much of the site’s heritage value. Few vestiges of the original structure remain intact; notable exceptions include the entrance gate to the grounds and the beam work and rosette window inside the old chapel. An interpretive centre does operate in the basement of the resort for the purpose of informing guests of Ktunaxa history and the intergenerational impact of the residential school, and staff were happy to screen for me a profoundly disturbing documentary, Survivors of the Red Brick School ((),), cchroniclinghronicling tthehe aabusebuse of mem- bers of the Baptiste family at St Eugene. e interpretive centre, however, receives few visitors, an outcome not helped by its relegation to the resort’s basement. Moreover, the centre’s modest confi nes do not allow for the display of full-sized artefacts, including a sturgeon nosed canoe waiting to be repatriated from the museum at Fort Steele. e Ktunaxa have applied for million in federal funding to design and build a museum in what once was the school barn (now the golf course’s pro shop), and it is hoped by some Ktunaxa staff that the inclusion of the museum will draw suffi cient attention to a history that is often overlooked and downplayed. is exceptional repurposing of St Eugene—it remains the only resort conversion of an in Canada—appears to validate the politics of recon- ciliation but at the expense of economic and political co-operation with a settler culture that broadly sustains an inequitable status quo. In this way, St Eugene’s bears both the imprint of national contrition and the grotesque, enduring features of colonial violence. is is not to reject the possibility of reconciliation but to assert that spaces of reconciliation, like those of repression, can never be without fi ssures, failures, and ambiguity. Such ambiguity is especially evident at one of the few non-commercial spaces at the resort, a small, active cemetery tucked to the side of the golf course, in which rest the remains of former students, staff , and others of Ktunaxa descent. At the request of Ktunaxa elders, I did not photograph the cemetery, but its marginal presence reveals the extent to which this development remains fraught. is is especially so, in light of planned
| Carr | forensic investigations at residential school graveyards by a research group with , owing to allegations of children interred in unmarked graves. e recuperation at St Eugene of notions of social reconciliation into systems of economic exchange signals what Slavoj Žižek terms post-politi- cal bio-politics, the “depoliticized, socially objective, expert administration and coordination of interests at the zero level of politics” (). In British Columbia, this process is also evident in the provincial government’s frequent use of the term “reconciliation” when promoting the ethical thrust of its programs meant to ameliorate its “relationship” with the province’s Indigenous population. Indeed, this government has a Minis- try of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, its mandate to settle land claims, stimulate business ventures, and manage public opinion. Interest- ingly, in recent days Premier Gordon Campbell has installed a “Leadership Desk,” carved by Arthur Vickers in the form of a bentwood box, which the Premier described as symbolic of a common desire to build bridges and reconciliation between cultures. Such an aesthetic sublimation of colonial patrimony—from infl icting intergenerational trauma to contrite reconcili- ation—suggests the operation of what John Milbank calls the “unparal- leled reign of kitsch,” wherein the abjection of social relations in liberal democracies becomes masked by a “virtual circus designed to entertain the middle-classes of the privileged world” (). Milbank’s castigation seems especially apt considering the B.C. Liberals’ penchant for brokering deals with corporations at the expense of the ecological and cultural integrity of Indigenous territories: some recent examples include Shell Oil’s plan to drill in the Klabona region, foreign fi sh farms at Ocean Falls, and the destruction of the cave by developers at Bear Mountain Resort.²¹ is is not to suggest, however, that the Ktunaxa people are somehow made victims or dupes through such collaboration. Many employed at the resort express pleasure in the fact that the school has been converted in this way. Former chief and survivor Sophie Pierre also feels great pride that the site of her traumatized childhood now yields the potential for long- term community benefi t (Pierre –). In addition, management has made changes to call greater attention to Ktunaxa culture—prominently displaying poignant historical photographs and plant species important in Ktunaxa life, as well as staging a “Legends Night,” where guests and locals gather to hear legends shared by elders. As the Ktunaxa wrestled with the decision to renovate the bleak, deserted institution, they were guided by A useful source for information on environmental struggles between B.C. First Nations and the provincial government that are not adequately covered in the mainstream press can be accessed at www.fi rstnations.eu.
| Atopoi of the Modern | the words of Elder Mary Paul who reminded them that “if you think you lost so much in that building, it’s not lost ... You only really lose something if you refuse to pick it up again” (). In this way, it is apparent that these ambiguous, reconciliatory spaces are profoundly complicated, tangled with hope and despair, growth and blight, accomplishment and atrocity. And yet it remains diffi cult to separate the act of “picking up” lost cultures and identities from a market system sustained through this same series of deprivations. As such St Eugene’s bears both the imprint of national contrition and the grotesque, enduring features of colonial violence. Many aspects of the history of the Indian Residential School system remain untold, suppressed, dismissed. I question whether the sheer geo- graphic and temporal scope of this traumatic social memory could ever be managed by offi cial bodies, such as the Monument Board or Parks Canada. e profoundly complicated historical outcome wrought by the opera- tion of the undercuts the plausibility of the simple, linear Abrahamic concept of apology and reconciliation. As a consequence of the inherent sanguinity of much public reconciliation talk, it would seem more fi tting to resist what David Scott has referred to as the romantic narrative of modernity, where “history rides a triumphant and seamlessly progressive rhythm.” In its place, Scott posits the “strategy of tragedy,” which is “not to dismiss out of hand the claims of reason, but to honour the contingent, the ambiguous, the paradoxical, and the unyielding in human aff airs in such a way as to complicate our most cherished notions about the rela- tion between identity and diff erence, reason and unreason, blindness and insight, action and responsibility, guilt and innocence” (). In other words, it makes most sense not to struggle for resolution of this past or reconciliation with it but to try to unearth and struggle with complica- tions and diffi culties arising from the commodifi cation and interpretation of such sites of diffi cult heritage. By thinking about St Eugene in this way, in its historical and present-day condition, new questions have emerged regarding the confrontation of ambivalent and confl icted social memory, with the material fabric of brutal pasts, and with compromised solutions to unequivocal problems. Moreover, in its contemporary guises, St Eugene compels a rethinking of discourses of reconciliation, to preclude the use of these atopos as instruments of public relations, in favour of sites of self-refl exive uncertainty.
| Carr | Works Cited
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| Atopoi of the Modern |