Cumulative domicide: The Sayisi Dene and destruction of home in mid-twentieth century Canada

Abstract

This article introduces a new concept to help explain domicide perpetrated against one group of people over space and time: ‘cumulative domicide’. The authors challenge the notion of domicide as an event and instead conceptualize the rights violation as a process. The cumulative domicide against the Sayisi Dene in Manitoba from the 1950s to the 1970s is a perfect illustration of the compounding, intergenerational effects that cumulative domicide can have upon a people when they are torn from their home and are not allowed to remake home elsewhere on their terms. In the case of the Sayisi Dene, the authors argue that processes of colonial expansion and hegemony are based on cumulative domicide and that this process occurs over variances in time and space.

Anthropological approach to the question of domicide

“…Apart from analysis of its compositional notions, most important re-examinations were given through studies of domicide's typology. Therefore, terms such as sociosymbolic domicide, cumulative domicide, "post-domicide condition" (Basso-Ciaschi et al 2020;Tuathail-Dahlman 2006: 257;Nowicki 2023), and named connections with concepts of "home unmaking" and "slow violence" emphasize that domicide is an evolving concept (Baxter-Brickell 2014; Nixon 2013). Furthermore, suggested association of domicide with cultural trauma, implicitly present in Ammar Azzous (2023) description of the case of Syria, as well as the inclusion of the management of natural disasters in its thematic scope, directed attention to ideological forces and their interpretation as primary reference points in research.…”

Rethinking housing insecurity: Property relations and domicide in settler colonial Canada

“…These include Donnan's (2016) argument that domicide contributes to deteriorating housing conditions and Indigenous homelessness, and Basso et al. (2020) conceptualization of “cumulative domicide” to challenge the idea of domicide as an event. Instead, they argue, domicide is perpetrated steadily over time and space, where Indigenous peoples are displaced from their homelands and prevented from remaking home on their terms.…”

Home in question: Uncovering meanings, desires and dilemmas of non-home

“…While homelessness, literal or symbolic (Baydar, 2005), involves the non-existence of a place to call home in a given time-space, a different mode of non-home occurs whenever a place or a condition that used to be home is destroyed by some external force or actor. Non-home as dispossession includes forms of ‘domicide’ (Porteous and Smith, 2001) ranging from the literal destruction of a home (or even a homeland – Basso et al, 2020) to the expulsion of its residents after a war, a catastrophe or particularly critical events such as evictions. As a result, the home that is lost is ‘left behind in another time’ (Jansen and Lofving, 2009: 15).…”