““I want to get rid of the Indian problem.....our objective is to continue until there is not an Indian that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department…” ”
The White People Problem
The White People Problem is a series of experimental works that seek to engage white settlers on issues of colonialism, inequity, and privilege in Canada. Grounded in Boyce’s personal experiences, this work is her response to conversations within her family and social in-groups in
Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Using an interdisciplinary approach, Boyce combines everyday objects, statistical data, and comparison via self-location, to create an “inverse” white gaze. Viewers of the work are asked to consider the ways in which they benefit from a colonial system in a country whose policies continue to perpetuate a legacy of harm against Indigenous Peoples.
Medium: Milk Carton Sculpture, Silk Screening, Augmented Reality (AR).
Missing is a response to the prioritization of white bodies over Indigenous ones. When my own mother went missing from Thunder Bay in November of 2018, there were four other (Indigenous) women also missing from the city that week; but when I typed “missing woman Thunder Bay” into the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) national website – the country’s largest national news platform – my white mother was the only woman listed.
The violence this country does to Indigenous bodies has become so normalized that when a white woman goes missing it is considered to be newsworthy, but when four Indigenous women do the same, it’s just another Thursday. Missing appears to be a white milk carton on a long, narrow wall-mounted shelf. It is blank save for the black and white image of a white woman printed on one side in the style of a 1980s missing person ad. Here is where AR provides a literal other lens to look through. When viewed through AR on a mobile phone, the screen is filled with milk cartons with the faces of missing Indigenous women pulled with permission from the CBC’s missing and murdered Indigenous women database. The images continue to change to a new woman, a new face, every few seconds. The intent is to, again, make a comparison via my own self-location. When my mother went missing in Thunder Bay, it was national news. She and I both have the privilege of police concern for the well-being of our bodies because we are white.
Installation view, Ignite Gallery, Toronto, May 2019. Medium: Repurposed vintage radio, p5.js, Adafruit Feather microcontroller and Featherwing Musicmaker.
Colonial Radio plays a constant drone of racist quotes from Prime Minister John A. MacDonald and Duncan Campbell Scott, who was the Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs from 1913 until 1932. The radio has multiple audio tracks that the user can turn the dial to and from. However, they cannot turn down the volume or turn it off.