T.B.R. Westgate: Organizing Indigenous Erasure for the Anglican Church, 1920–1943

Abstract

[Figure: see text]T.B.R. Westgate, a Canadian Anglican priest who administered his church’s national system of Indian residential schools from 1921 to 1943, developed a sophisticated and effective bureaucracy to operate them efficiently, economically, and in compliance with government standards. He entirely supported the schools’ goal of Indigenous erasure, which accorded with his settler colonial outlook, his theological position, and his overseas missionary experience. All his decisions were framed by the need to make do with funding that was very limited since neither the government nor the settler church put much value on educating a people that they disparaged and expected to disappear. In his role, Westgate also functioned as the Anglican Church’s principal advocate for the assimilation of Indigenous Peoples into settler culture. His efforts, rationales, and failures are evaluated with reference to some of the insights of settler colonial studies.