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Liberalism, Surveillance, and Resistance: Indigenous Communities in Western Canada, 1877-1927


Cover of the book Liberalism, Surveillance and Resistance

By Keith D. Smith

May 2009
Paperback
978-1-897425-39-8 (SC)

Order $39.95

May 2009
E-Book
978-1-897425-40-4 (e-book)

Series
The West Unbound: Social & Cultural Studies series

 

About the Book

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.

 

About the Author

Keith D. Smith is Chair of the Department of First Nations Studies and teaches in the Department of History at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, British Columbia.