Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State

David E. Smith is a professor of political Studies at the University of
Saskatchewan. He is the author of Building a Province: A History of
Saskatchewan in Documents, The Invisible Crown, and Republican Option in
Canada, Past and Present.

Today, compared to 25 years ago, there is a large and growing literature
on aboriginal matters. Yet few of these articles, monographs, and books
speak to nonaboriginal Canadians, especially to those outside of
university classrooms. Still, the relation between Native people and the
Canadian state (hence the subtitle of Citizens Plus) is of immense
importance to the future of Canadian society, politics, and the economy.


By any standard, Alan Cairns is the dean of Canadian political science.
The master of the expository essay, he has recast the way his fellow
citizens think of their governments and societies. Three of the five
chapters in this book were originally given as public lectures. It is a
format that makes Cairns’ argument—this time about
citizenship—accessible to the general public, a virtue not often found
in academic writing. His capacity for presentation is the work’s
greatest strength and an essential attribute, since the thesis he
advocates is very contentious.

Citizenship, he implies (although he does not use the phrase), is the
genome of political society. If not inferior to citizenship, equality,
community, and identity are partial attributes realized only through
citizenship. Yet Native people rightly distrust the word and the
concept. In the past, it has meant assimilation to Eurocentric values.
The end of empire, the winds of change propelled by an international (if
not universal) acceptance of human rights, and the rise of identity
politics—all of these have molded the conception aboriginal Canadians
have of themselves. But it is a perception that increasingly sees
relations between aboriginal and nonaboriginal Canadians as those
between nations or governments. This is a constitutional future Cairns
views as impracticable, unattainable, and undesirable.

Instead, he maintains that aboriginal Canadians can preserve and
strengthen their identity within the present constitution, which in
recent years has demonstrated its capacity to acknowledge and reinforce
multiple identities. The challenge is to fit this future within a
fraternal federalism. E.M. Forster used the phrase first, but it is
applicable to this humane endeavor—“only connect.”