Intimate colonialisms: the material and experienced places of British Columbia's residential schools

Abstract

The theoretical premise of this paper is that place is an unbounded material, social and cultural agent within and through which practices of colonialism were enacted in British Columbia. Specifically, the places of British Columbia's ‘Indian’ residential schools, and the subjects who occupied them, are conceptualized as intimate sites nested within Canadian colonial and nation‐building agendas that were predicated on policies of assimilation, enculturation or annihilation of indigenous people. Such conceptualizations allow for an understanding of both how colonialism was actualized against First Nations' peoples and how First Nations' peoples actively navigated and resisted that colonial project. In order to access experiences of residential school places, the article draws from published First Nations' testimonial literatures. It also draws from creative materials produced by students within the schools in order to understand how First Nations' students articulated against assimilative educational processes. The article concludes with a consideration of how nested place, First Nations' resistances, and Euro‐colonial concepts of gender are circulating today with reference to a Dakelh woman (and former residential school student) under consideration for beatification in northern British Columbia.

Gender, Justice, and the Indian Residential School Claims Process

“…However, given the patriarchal and Eurocentric worldviews of the colonizers, "it can be argued that Aboriginal women's fall from grace was more devastating and widespread" (Wolski, 2009, p. 273). The Indian Residential School system significantly contributed to this "fall from grace" through its mandate to entrench patriarchal values into Aboriginal children (Martin-Hill, 2003) and with curricula that espoused the Euro-colonial vision of civilizing Aboriginal women by enforcing upon them concepts of submissiveness and servitude toward both the colonial class and Aboriginal men (de Leeuw, 2007).…”

Searching for safe space: the absent presence of childhood sexual abuse in human geography

“…It is also present in studies that examine the silencing of those who protect children from harm, including sexual abuse (Ruddick 2007a). Other work in human geography has touched on the act of sexual abuse itself as part of broader socio-political strategies (Mohammad 1999;De Leeuw, 2007) and on the cover-up of CSA as part of nation-building (Crowley and Kitchin 2008).…”

‘The magical operations of separation’: English elite schools’ on-line geographies, internationalisation and functional isolation

“…The separation that schooling can involve has been most starkly exposed by Sarah De Leeuw (2007Leeuw ( , 2009 (1986). 3 As we will describe, Bourdieu frequently (implicitly) invokes the role of space and spatial practices in describing the work of elite schools.…”