This article explores the afterlife of a military base on the islands of Haida Gwaii, unceded territory of the Indigenous Haida Nation. Canadian Forces Station Masset was officially decommissioned in 1997, its buildings abandoned by Canada’s armed forces. The understanding of both Haida and their settler neighbors was thus that the army was gone, leaving only ruins and ambivalent affects in its wake. Yet the military had not actually left; rather, it remained in concealment, continuing to monitor the territory it had occupied. At work in this strange juxtaposition of absence and presence, I argue, is the deliberate production of a paradox, a constitutive contradiction that serves to reinforce the structures of settler domination even as it mitigates the visible presence of the forces of occupation. The affects of ruination engendered by the military’s departure, I contend, form part of these processes of settler concealment and deception.

中文翻译：

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不持久：定居者殖民主义下的军事占领和毁灭

本文探讨了海达瓜伊岛上军事基地的来世，海达瓜伊岛是土著海达民族未割让的领土。加拿大部队马塞特站于 1997 年正式退役，其建筑物被加拿大武装部队废弃。因此，海达和他们的定居者邻居的理解是，军队已经消失，只剩下废墟和矛盾的影响。然而军队并没有真正离开。相反，它仍然处于隐蔽状态，继续监视它所占领的领土。我认为，在这种缺席和在场的奇怪并列中起作用的是一种悖论的蓄意生产，一种构成性的矛盾，它有助于加强定居者统治的结构，即使它减轻了占领力量的可见存在。