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Abstract: This article addresses the range and prevalence of continuing surveillance forms and practices imposed on indigenous peoples wherein indigenous peoples are constructed as potential insurgents, terrorists and criminals collectively or individually threatening the security of the Canadian oligarchic state. I discuss how "securitization spreads out to connect diverse issues together" and how "the discursive framework of securitization therefore links issues in a selective way that reflects an underlying political rationality" (Gledhill 2008: 4-5, emphasis added). That underlying state rationality is colonialism.
Keywords: indigenous peoples, surveillance, securitization, colonialism, protests, demonization
Résumé : Cet article décrit la portée et la prévalence des formes et pratiques de surveillance continue imposées aux populations autochtones, où celles-ci sont mises en scène tels des insurgés, des terroristes et des criminels potentiels qui, à titre individuel ou collectif, menacent la sécurité de l'État oligarchique canadien. Je discute comment « la sécurisation s'étend pour relier entre eux divers enjeux *> et comment <* le cadre discursif de la sécurisation relie donc des enjeux de manière sélective reflétant une rationalité politique sous-jacente » (Gledhill 2008: 4-5, nous soulignons). Cette rationalité d'État sous-jacente n'est autre que le colonialisme.
Mots-clés : peuples autochtones, surveillance, sécurisation, colonialisme, protestations, démonisation
Introduction
Canada has a long history of surveilling indigenous peoples. Indian Act Status cards, the reserve pass system (LeRat 2005) and Inuit numbered identification disks (Scott et al. 2004:36-37) allowed the colonial state to monitor the lives of those forced to bear them. Brown and Brown (1978) note that one of the earliest acts of state surveillance of indigenous peoples occurred as "federally, the North West Mounted Police made defending the Canadian Pacific Railway part of their mandate, guarding it against 'Indians, non-indigenous peoples and their own employees'" (de Lint 2004:4). In the period between 1877 and 1927 a "vast network of machinery" (Smith 2010:1) ensured that "no other group of people were subjected to similar levels of observation ... for such an extended period of time" (17). Oka, Ipperwash, Gustafsen Lake, Burnt Church and Caledonia show how surveillance combined with military and para-military actions are used by the colonial state to suppress selfdetermination threats in the "perpetual low-intensity warfare against Indigenous peoples" (Hussain 2004:para 8). The aims of surveillance have not changed. Surveillance is used...