Danielle Taschereau Mamers, "Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing: Documentation, Administration, and the Interventions of Indigenous Art" (Fordham UP, 2023)

Apr 23, 2024

Dr. Danielle Taschereau Mamers discusses how Canadian state uses documents to shape Indigenous identity. She explores the role of bureaucratic artifacts in colonial governance and highlights Indigenous artists challenging mainstream perceptions through their work. The podcast also covers topics like the intersection of art and documentation in settler colonialism, the reappropriation of legal texts in art, and the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Exploring Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing through Art and Documentation

01:59 • 23min

Exploring a Subversive Website Defying Traditional Registration Processes

24:54 • 5min

Exploring Indigenous Identity and Legislative Structures Through Film Analysis

29:55 • 4min

Addressing the Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

34:06 • 5min

Decolonization, Art, and Political Structures

39:30 • 6min

How do bureaucratic documents create and reproduce a state’s capacity to see? What kinds of worlds do documents help create? Further, how might such documentary practices and settler colonial ways of seeing be refused?

Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing: Documentation, Administration, and the Interventions of Indigenous Art (Fordham University Press, 2023) by Dr. Danielle Taschereau Mamers investigates how the Canadian state has used documents, lists, and databases to generate, make visible—and invisible—Indigenous identity. With an archive of legislative documents, registration forms, identity cards, and reports, Dr. Taschereau Mamers traces the political and media history of Indian status in Canada, demonstrating how paperwork has been used by the state to materialise identity categories in the service of colonial governance. Her analysis of bureaucratic artefacts is led by the interventions of Indigenous artists, including Robert Houle, Nadia Myre, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, and Rebecca Belmore. Bringing together media theories of documentation and the strategies of these artists, Settler Colonial Ways of Seeing develops a method for identifying how bureaucratic documents mediate power relations as well as how those relations may be disobeyed and re-imagined.

By integrating art-led inquiry with media theory and settler colonial studies approaches, Dr. Taschereau Mamers offers a political and media history of the documents that have reproduced Indian status. More importantly, she provides us with an innovative guide for using art as a method of theorising decolonial political relations. This is a crucial book for any reader interested in the intersection of state archives, settler colonial studies, and visual culture in the context of Canada’s complex and violent relationship with Indigenous peoples.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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