Author Description

At the core of the essay is a political scientist's vision of how Aboriginal peoples and non-Aboriginal Canadians are to share half a continent. This vision is grounded in four key contexts. The first is the global anti-colonial movement of Indigenous peoples in settler societies, understood as the second stage of anti-colonialism following the successful Third World independence movements. The second context brings to the foreground a variety of Aboriginal realities in Canada, including the urban Aboriginal population, high rates of intermarriage with non-Aboriginal Canadians, the small size of First Nation communities, and the large Aboriginal ancestry population which does not self-identify as Aboriginal. The third context comprises a survey of Aboriginal constitutional alienation with respect to Parliament, elections, the federal system (especially the provinces), the Charter and Canadian citizenship. The fourth and final context seeks a pathway through the Aboriginal-state impasses through an attempted synthesis of two somewhat contradictory perspectives on accommodating national unity and multinational diversity - both associated with the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. In the postscript, 'A Recipe for Living Together,' Professor Cairns provides a series of more concrete recommendations as to how Aboriginal and other Canadians might forge a common future."--pub. website.