Frontier Justice

--Description taken from "Frontier Justice"-- I define "frontier justice" as the ordering of frontier according to the normative values of settler colonialism. Detailing materials surrounding the 1885 North-West Rebellion, I examine "colonial governmentalities" that shaped early colonial strategies in Canada's North-West Territories. Developing on ideas of Foucault's, I argue that colonial governmentalities balance techniques of sovereign as well as biopolitical power in the process of ordering the frontier. In particular, this demonstrates how indigenous populations are incorporated by processes of state formation and categorized along a continuum of "good" and "bad" conduct. While the settlement of the Canadian prairies is often depicted through myths of "empty origins" or as a "bloodless revolution," the transformation of the North-West was replete with violence and injustice. Reviewing archival records helps interrogate practices at work in the North-West and, in revealing how frontier justice is not remote or historical, demonstrates the continuity of these rationalities in the colonial present.