ABSTRACT
Settlers imagine themselves in a triumphalist narrative of a superior race whose superiority is confirmed in an encounter with dead Indians. In this chapter, I consider what the state does with dead bodies in inquests and inquiries into Indigenous deaths in custody, sites I consider to be the equivalent of the defiled graves of Indigenous peoples. A defiled grave is one that is desecrated and violated. To defile is also to sully someone’s reputation. The settler must engage in a regular process of desecration if that subject is to know itself as triumphant and legitimate.
