Hiding in Plain Sight: Indigenous Repression and Resistance in Photographs of the 1901 Royal Tour of Canada

Photographs taken by William James Topley and William McFarlane Notman of the 1901 royal tour of Canada reflect the intersection of technological and political changes shaping the dominion at the turn of the century. The advent of the handheld camera, while increasing the scope of the colonial gaze, also enabled photographers to take more candid photographs of the royal party and Indigenous attendees. The informal snapshot photographs taken by Topley and McFarlane Notman on handheld cameras at the tour disrupt the triumphalist visual narratives of the tour perpetuated in the settler colonial press. Yet the abundance of potential meanings inscribed within these photographs at the moment of their taking has been disciplined and obscured through their omission from visual economies of the tour, and subsequently, their categorisation within state archives according to settler colonial logics and perspectives.