Thread by @KamloopsArchaeo

I have an idea instead of renaming Emily Carr’s ‘Indian Church’.

👉Teach the role of these little churches in Canada’s civilization project. In clearing the land. In cultural genocide.👈 #TruthBeforeReconciliation (AGO pics) 1/

The decision to Remove-the-Indian-From-The-Painting is a decolonizing opportunity lost.

Better to learn WTF an Indian Church is & *why* they’re everywhere (📷VancouverArchives) 2/

Sure, Carr called the painting Indian Church, and that may grate since we’ve now matured into FirstNationsIndigenous vocab... but it actually WAS that.

It’s a thing: a ~Church~ built by missionaries for ~Indians~. 3/

These churches are all over BC. Setting up proselytizing franchises in Indigenous towns is heritage minute status Canadiana. Betchya there’s one on a reserve near you.

Here’s our local, St Joseph’s. 4/

They actually *were* referred to as ‘the Indian Church’, many still are.

Lots have shownames too, like OurLadyOurPerpetualWillYouStopAlready, and some go by that now, but ‘Indian Church’ was A Thing with a function. 5/

When settlement replaced fur and gold as a reason to be in BC in the late 1850s, missionaries flooded in.

Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (really) and others. (Kach Indian Church, N. BC Archives) 6/

Their churches aimed to tether Indigenous people to the places that would become reserves, freeing land for white people, and were an explicit part of ‘civilizing the Indians’.

Missionaries actively helped create and regulate the settlement frontier. (Vancouver Archives) 7/

Indian Churches dominated new villages, where European values were enforced. There were rules.

‘Watchmen’ were appointed to spy, ‘chiefs’ were anointed to enforce. (Excerpt Fisher 1977) 8/

Missionaries’ social and cultural coercion aimed to foster “habits of instant obedience” (Rev JB Good, 1868) and was wholeheartedly supported—structurally and financially—by settler governments. 9/

Indian Churches established to transform “ignorant bloodthirsty savages to quite useful subjects of our gracious queen” (Rev R Tomlinson, 1870), opened the door, naturally, to residential schools. (KIRS, BC Archives10/

Now lots of communities still embrace these churches. Reclaim traditions inside them. Adapt both the structures and the institutions to their needs.

Others never did. (St Paul’s, Squamish, and at Spence’s Bridge via bethcausley.com/nlakpamux-chur…) 11/

I’m deeply sceptical of AGO’s goal to remove “hurtful and painful” content from artwork.

Is it possible, desirable, as a Canadian cultural institution, to do so and achieve any real success in cultural education? 12/

And for who are we sanitizing the works? Who would be shocked and upset by the reality of an Indian Church? Of the attempted conquest of Indigenous—physical, economic, spiritual—by the west?

👉White people, that’s who👈(detail of Carr’s D’sonoqua) 13/

AGO tried, in 2013, to be reflective about this. But somehow ended up positioning these churches as benignly ‘filling the void’ left by outlawed Indigenous spirituality.

As if the void wasn’t predatory, created by the churches. TIME TO TRY AGAIN. 14/

Decolonization isn’t sweeping colonialism under the rug.

We presume that Emily Carr was respectful & open minded? Fine. Then presume she wanted us to understand something about this place. Use her work to educate, not erase. (D Plowden pic) #TruthBeforeReconciliation 15/15

PS Lots more about IndianChurch & missionaries’ roles in BC colonization can be found in these (dated but thorough) volumes.

I’d love to hear your refs for more recent works, esp from Indigenous perspectives.