Colonial Numbers: Quantification, Indigeneity, and the Politics of Fiscal Surveillance

Abstract

This paper considers how processes of quantification are implicated in settler colonial political imperatives. I examine how colonial numbers operate as forms of governmentality that obfuscate, depoliticize, commensurate, fiscalize, promote transparency and visibility, and ultimately reduce the density of Indigenous Nations. The paper specifically focusses on how fiscal surveillance flows from colonial numbers to make Indigenous life legible to the state, markets, and settlers. The paper concludes by complicating the relationship between colonialism, numbers, governance, and ignorance.