No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
I have tried to show how criticism of aboriginal orthodoxy in discourse and measures taken by the current Conservative government and private commentators have set in motion a process of contempt, risking the harm associated with colonialism. Another critique of aboriginal orthodoxy, as presented by Jean-Jacques Simard, claims that First Nations are entitled to a certain level of self-government in defence of the rights of the abstract person: “it is first and foremost simply as human beings that all Amerindians possess the same rights as anyone else….” Yet this option ignores the history of First Nations’ relationships with French Canadians, English Canadians and the British. While appeal to the abstract person can protect people from a threat, it cannot eliminate that threat. It seems clear that contempt towards aboriginals is still present and that their emancipation without an honourable historical justification would also lead to the exacerbation of racism against aboriginals. To make mutual recognition possible between aboriginal and non-aboriginal, we need to have shared criteria for evaluation. It would seem, therefore, that if we were willing to integrate First Nations into the Canadian constitutional order by fully recognizing them, we must find a common project. If the Canadian government were to move more in the direction of an ecological vision of development rather than in the direction of a predatory capitalism based on infinite economic growth, I believe it would be easier to secure First Nations’ sense of belonging to Canada and to agree on models for joint territorial management. That awakening rings a bell we must hear: if seniority on the land and the role played by national groups in the founding of Canada are erased by a unitary, multicultural and monarchist vision of the country, the odds are high that Canadians of diverse origins will eventually suffer the blows of renewed authoritarianism and contempt.
I would like to thank my spouse, Josée Blanchette, and my friend and colleague Louis-Étienne Pigeon for their helpful comments on this article, and for many fruitful exchanges of ideas on the subject. Thanks go as well to my thesis supervisor Jocelyn Maclure, and to the participants in the Indigenous Peoples and Governance research project for immersing me in issues regarding First Nations, reflections on recognition and identity, the report to minority groups and the territory report (among many other topics). Special thanks go to Pierre Noreau and Karine Gentelet for their encouragement as I conducted the research that culminated in this article.
1. Omnibus Bill C-45 in effect facilitates the dismemberment and leasing of designated reserve lands.
2. Diabo, Russell, “Harper Launches Major First Nations Termination Plan: As Negotiating Tables Legitimize Canada’s Colonialism” (June-October 2012) 10 First Nations Strategic Bulletin 5 Google Scholar online: http://intercontinentalcry.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/FNSB-July-Oct-12.pdf. There are currently 93 negotiating tables on aboriginal self-government and First-Nations land claims across Canada.
3. See Lajoie, André, “Les traités modernes au Québec et au Canada” (2004) 2:1 Les cahiers du 27 juin 49.Google Scholar
4. Boivin, Richard & Morin, René, “La Commission royale sur les peuples autochtones (1991-1996) ou la longue marche des peuples autochtones du Canada vers la reconnaissance de leurs droits” (2007) 37:1 Recherches amérindiennes 25 at 29.Google Scholar
5. In addition to the famous First Nations? Second Thoughts (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, the first edition of which came out in 2000, see Howard, and Widdowson, , Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008)Google Scholar or Richards, John’ article, “Reserves Are Only Good For Some People” (2000) 35:1 J Can Stud 190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Other discussions of indigenous orthodoxy are more nuanced, however, such as the discussion launched by Simard, Jean-Jacques, La réduction: l’autochtone inventé et les Amérindiens d’aujourd’hui (Québec: Septentrion, 2003).Google Scholar
6. See Honneth, Axel, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conficts [English edition—Great Britain: Polity Press, 1996]Google Scholar.
7. See Gagnon, Mathieu, “De la négociation à l’imposition: le risque d’un retour en arrière, d’un retour au mépris” (2012) 14:1 Éthique publique 175 Google Scholar and Gagnon, Mathieu, Enquête morale sur le mépris envers les Premières Nations: le programme de conversion des Jésuites en Huronie au 17e siècle et le programme de civilisation britanno-canadien du 19e siècle (Masters Paper delivered at Laval University, 2011) [unpublished]Google Scholar.
8. Which is implicit in Honneth, who derives his individualistic approach from an analysis of social movements.
9. Honneth, supra note 6 at 159.
10. See Sagard, Gabriel, Le Grand voyage au pays des Hurons suivi du Dictionnaire de la langue huronne, ed by Warwick, Jack (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1998)Google Scholar. See also Sagard, Father Gabriel, The long journey to the country of the Hurons, ed by Wrong, George M (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1939).Google Scholar
11. Delâge, Denys, Le pays renversé, Amérindiens et Européens en Amérique du Nord-Est— 1600-1664 (Montréal: Éditions Boréal, 1991) at 176.Google Scholar [The title of the English translation is The Bitter Feast].
12. Ibid at 173.
13. See Mourin, Samuel, “Avoir recours à nos sauvages alliez: La participation des autochtones aux expéditions militaires françaises contre les Iroquois à la fn du XVIIe siècle” in Beaulieu, Alain & Gohier, Maxime, eds, Les autochtones et l’État (Montreal: Actes de colloque étudiant de la Chaire de recherche du Canada sur la question territoriale autochtone de l’Université du Québec à Montréal, 2008) at 27.Google Scholar
14. Victoria, a Thomist theologian, was the head of the University of Salamanca in 1526 and also served as legal advisor to Charles V. He is considered one of the precursors to modern international law.
15. Williams, Robert A Jr, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) at 104.Google Scholar
16. Delâge, supra note 11 at 176.
17. Memmi, Albert, Portrait du colonisateur, portrait du colonisé (Montreal: Éditions l’Étincelle, 1972) at 64.Google Scholar Memmi, Albert, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965).Google Scholar
18. We should prefer the term “medicine man” to “shaman,” because their healing skills bestowed on them a level of prestige that guaranteed a certain spiritual authority.
19. Delâge, supra note 11 at 216.
20. Ibid at 195. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791, vol XXV, online: http://puffn.creighton.edu/jesuit/relations/relations_25.html.
21. Delâge, supra note 11 at 198.
22. Ibid at 199.
23. Ibid at 299.
24. Leslie, John, “The Bagot Commission: Developing a Corporate Memory for the Indian Department” (1982) 17:1 Historical Papers/Communications historiques at 32..Google Scholar
25. Report of the Bagot Commission, cited in Lavoie, Michel, “Politique sur commande” (2007) 37:1 Recherches amérindiennes at 10.Google Scholar
26. The canons of this anthropology are doubtless. Tylor, Edward B, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom, 2 vol (London: H Murray, 1871)Google Scholar; Morgan, Lewis H, Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (New York: Holt, 1877).Google Scholar
27. Leslie, supra note 24 at 45.
28. See Dickason, Olive Patricia, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).Google Scholar
29. Ibid at 284.
30. See Carr-Stewart, Sheila, “A Treaty Right to Education” (2001) 26:2 Can Journal of Education/Journal Canadien de l’éducation 125 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31. Désveaux, Emmanuel, “Mythe” in Bonte, Pierre & Izard, Michel, eds, Dictionnaire de l’ethnologie et de l’anthropologie (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2002) 498 at 499Google Scholar.
32. Flanagan, supra note 5 at 66.
33. Ibid at 42.
34. Jean-Jacques Simard, supra note 5 at 104-09.
35. Note that the name of the department apparently announces the intention to develop the aboriginal territories.
36. For a critical analysis of the Prime Minister’s apology to First Nations for the residential schools, see Anderson, Willow J, “‘Indian drum in the house’: A critical discourse analysis of an apology for Canadian residential schools and the public’s response” (2012) 74:6 International Communication Gazette 571.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37. Radio-Canada, “Attawapiskat sous tutelle” (1 December 2011), online: Radio-Canada.ca http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/Ontario/2011/11/30/008-attawapiskat-gestion-tiers.shtml.
38. Duhaime, Gérard & Godmaire, Anne, “Les modèles de développement du Nord, Analyse exploratoire au Québec isolé” (2002) 43:2 Recherches sociographiques 329 at 334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
39. Flanagan, Tom, “A Roadmap for Aboriginal Self-Reliance. Book Review” (15 September 2007)Google Scholar, online: Fraser Forum 30 http://www.fraserinstitute.org/uploadedFiles/fraser-ca/Content/research-news/research/articles/roadmap-for-aboriginal-self-reliance-book-review.pdf.
40. Radio-Canada, supra note 37.
41. Jean-Jacques|Simard, supra note 5 at 406.
42. Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland: The World Publishing Co, 1958).Google Scholar
43. Mead, George H, L’esprit, le soi et la société (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2006) at 342.Google Scholar
44. On the confusion between attribution and recognition, see Honneth, Axel, “Grounding Recognition: A Rejoinder to Critical Questions” (2002) 45:2 Inquiry 499 at 505-12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.