Disrupting the Register: TreatyCard.ca and Indigenous Counter-Archives

This essay analyzes the Indian Register as a key source of documentation in the archive of settler colonial law and Cheryl L’Hirondelle’s (Cree/Métis) TreatyCard.ca as a counter-archival disruption to the state’s archive. The Canadian government’s system of “Indian” registration and the archive it has generated served to literalize the claims of the Indian Act. Parts one and two of this essay historically contextualize the Indian Register and attend to its application forms as a key site of colonial law’s archival operation. Part three analyzes TreatyCard.ca as an alternative register that makes visible the limited frames of visibility that the Indian Register imposes on Indigenous identity and prompts a counter-reading of the Register’s archival function. The counter-archival disruption of TreatyCard.ca creates a radically open register wherein participants author and authorize their own identities at a remove from the state’s sovereign archival desires.