Intimate Surveillance: Indian Affairs, Colonization, and the Regulation of Aboriginal Women's Sexuality

From the Author's Introduction: "In the first half of the twentieth century, DIA officials remained firmly entrenched in a well-established department tradition of promoting and supporting colonialism. In pursuit of the primary goal of assimilating First Nations people, they attempted to reshape Aboriginal societies in the Euro-Canadian image. As one of the key axes of identity construction and behaviour prescriptions, gender was a crucial area in which officials evaluated Aboriginal societies and intervened to alter older patterns. At the same time, that actions and rhetoric of these officials reveal the intersection of gender with notions about race and class. As “Indians,” First Nations people were expected to be integrated into mainstream society at the level of the unskilled or semi-skilled working class and to a racialized “Indian” minority. For women, the agents’ regulation of femininity focused particularly on sexual behaviour. In working to advance the process of Europeanization and assimilation that was intended to lead to the absorption of Native people into mainstream society, the DIA hoped to eliminate the “Indian problem,” along with the troubling resistance offered by some Aboriginal people to Euro-Canadian social and sexual norms.” Pg 162.