Abstract. Examining archival materials from the mid-1880s, this article details practices of racializing surveillance carried out in the North-West. I focus on the reports from an undercover agent from the Department of Indian Affairs named Peter Ballendine. Contributing to literature on Foucauldian interpretations of race and racialization, Ballendine's correspondence reveals a campaign of covert surveillance and infiltration that imbued indigenous leaders with characteristics of

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... abnormality, and deviance, translating indigenous demands for rights and dignity into threats to security of the budding Canadian settler state. Stressing that settler colonialism follows a structured logic of elimina- tion, I use the concept of settler governmentality to stress that the rationalities of colonial governance in the North-West approached indigeneity — especially expressions of counterconduct — as threats to the health, prosperity, and legit- imacy of settler society.