Atopoi of the Modern: Revisiting the Place of the Indian Residential School

On 11 June 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a formal apology to the Indigenous peoples of Canada for the federal government’s imposition of the Indian Residential School (irs) system. This long-awaited gesture of contrition was proffered in the wake of a multibillion dollar reparation package and the inception of a five-year Truth and Reconciliation Commission (trc). Increasingly, governments across the globe are partaking in the politics of regret, and as a consequence more scrutiny has fallen on the form and content of what are now called symbolic reparations: offering public apologies; expunging offensive names attached to institutions, buildings, and streets; constructing commemorative museums; and commissioning memorials.

One of the more persistent critiques of such symbolic reparations is the way in which they sublimate and compartmentalize the pain of mass social trauma.¹ This tendency appears in postapology sound bites circulating in the Canadian media, encouraging the nation to “turn the page on this painful history.” In this way, the official politics of regret in Canada produces a disquieting sense that the teleological ends of the democratic nation-state may yet be realized. This official narrative suggests that although founded on colonial violence, the nation is at last moving to its logical conclusion—a fair, open, and tolerant society. To date, however, most talk of reconciliation, from church and state, has shied away from the more burning questions raised by the spectre of the schools: how to prosecute offenders, determine if crimes against humanity have occurred, or reassess how this history impacts the legitimacy of Canadian sovereignty. This general silence stands in sharp contrast to the objections raised by critics, many of them Indigenous, who ask these same difficult questions. In this way, the narrative structure of “turning the page” threatens to foreclose an unflinching struggle with our colonial past and present.

Figure 1.

Architectural plan: St Eugene Indian Residential School, 1911, Allan Keefer, architect. Façade elevation. © Indian and Northern Affairs. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2009). Source: Library and Archives Canada / Indian and Northern Affairs / RG22M 77803 / 111 Item 1067.

In this article, I will attempt to complicate such facile reconciliatory narratives by examining the design and construction of Indian Residential Schools to outline this architecture’s function in the application of the so-called civilizing process and in the disruption of the political, social, and cultural life of Canada’s Indigenous populations. My analysis focuses in particular on the historical and present-day operation of St Eugene, the once–Indian Residential School now luxury resort, located in Cranbrook, British Columbia (figures 1 and 2).² I contend that the study of the

Figure 2.

Architectural plan: St Eugene Indian Residential School, 1911, Allan Keefer, architect. Ground floor. © Indian and Northern Affairs. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada (2009). Source: Library and Archives Canada / Indian and Northern Affairs / RG22M 77803 / 111 Item 1069.

building’s design, siting, and program, the policies guiding its operation, as well as the present repurposing of this institution, reveal much about the governmental rationality that informed the construction of a second generation of residential schools—focussed on segregating the unassimilable—and much about the profoundly complicated reconciliation process now underway in Canada as well.³ Dakota historian Waziyatawin has suggested that “no one will be committed to righting the wrongs if they cannot recognize and name those wrongs” (194). I contend that part of this recognition and naming requires a rethinking of the specific material and spatial operation of this architecture, to understand the particular and localized means of enacting policy. I argue further that thinking through the buildings of the residential school system, a project toward which this paper only makes an initial gesture, comprises an important part of the truth telling process and, by default, any effectual expression of contrition.

To date there have been no scholarly studies of the design, siting, scale...