Richard Day
Who is this we that gives the gift? Native American
Political Theory and The Western Tradition
ABSTRACT
The allocation of self-determination rights to minority
groups is a highly charged issue around the world, but
the difficulties are particularly acute in the case of indigenous peoples within the white settler states. While liberal multiculturalism offers a ‘solution’ to this ‘problem
of diversity’ through a system of differentiated citizenship rights, this comes only at the expense of excluding
dissenting voices from the intercultural dialogue.Through
an engagement with the multi-faceted critique of liberal
multiculturalism advanced by Native American political
theory, the limits of the recognition paradigm are identified, and the possibilities offered by a reconstructed
Proudhonian federalism are described.
KEYWORDS: anarchism, federalism, indigenous self-determination, Kymlicka, liberalism, multiculturalism, Native
American political theory, Proudhon, Taylor.
Introduction
Although it focuses on a discussion of the use
and abuse of the recognition paradigm in
American cultural politics, a recent exchange
between Richard Rorty and Nancy Fraser
Critical Horizons 2:2 (2001)
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2001
evokes themes that are relevant to wider debates. In her article, Fraser elaborates upon a “proposal for a united front of the Left” that would include
“democrats and multiculturalists,” while Rorty sets out a political vision that
incorporates all of “humanity.”1 Since these universalistic claims necessarily
emerge out of a particular discourse, it is important to consider how both
the ‘Americanness’ and the ‘Leftness’ of the Rorty/Fraser debate structure
its possibilities and limits.
The term ‘multiculturalism’, for example, takes on different meanings in
different national and international contexts. In the United States, it refers to
a growing awareness of the need for cultural accommodation in various institutional settings. The term ‘culture’ is interpreted loosely and openly, so as
to include not only racial and ethnic minorities, but also women, gays,
lesbians, and people with disabilities.2 Any subaltern group, then, can make
a claim under the auspices of the American politics of recognition. The force
of this claim is somewhat muted, however, by the lack of a national commitment to the principles of multiculturalism. Rather, the various levels
of government in the United States have stubbornly clung to the idea that
they are “culturally neutral” - just as there is supposed to be no official
American religion, there is and should be no official American ethnicity or
sexuality, these being “choices” one exercises in “the private sphere.”3
The situation is quite different in Canada and Australia, where multiculturalism has been adopted as both a state policy and a social ideal. The Canadian
Multiculturalism Act of 1988 sets out the Federal Government’s commitment
to “recognise and promote the understanding that multiculturalism reflects
the cultural and racial diversity of Canadian society,” and acknowledges that
multiculturalism is a “fundamental characteristic of Canadian heritage and
identity.”4 The Australian national government has taken a similar tack, declaring that it is “committed to a multicultural policy that recognises the social,
cultural, and economic benefits of the nation’s diversity and seeks to ensure
that it is a positive force for Australia.”5 Questions regarding the sincerity
and value of these commitments can of course be raised. For the moment, I
simply want to point out that the Canadian and Australian governments,
unlike their American counterpart, have not only been willing to dive into
the multicultural debates, but have to a certain extent helped to establish and
lead them.6
174 • Richard Day
It should also be noted that the definition of ‘culture’ employed in Canadian
and Australian multiculturalism involves a clear ‘ethnic’ or ‘racial’ connection. This more limited meaning implies a primary affiliation and an ascribed
status - an ‘origin’, to be precise. Thus a Canadian State policy document
includes the following definition of its object domain:
MULTICULTURALISM: Recognition of the diverse cultures of a plural
society based on three principles: we all have an ethnic origin (equality); all
our cultures deserve respect (dignity); and cultural pluralism needs official
support (community).7
In the Australian case, the commitment to multiculturalism is similarly limited to tolerance of diversity in “race, colour, creed, or origin,” and could not
be easily extended to include gender-based differences or ‘lifestyle’ choices.8
Paradoxically, the very ‘openness’ of the definition of culture in American
multiculturalism obscures certain issues that are more visible in the Canadian
and Australian discourses. The role of the state in the ‘management’ of indigenous identities is an important case in point, given the history of colonialism and conquest shared by all three of these states. How is it, one might
ask, that two prominent theorists who invoke universalistic terms like humanity, democracy, and multiculturalism, are able to conduct their discussion
without a single reference to the Indigenous peoples of North America? How
is it that an American social worker, in 1998, can write that many of her
colleagues “are not aware that the federal government and some state governments have specific moral and legal rights and responsibilities towards
Native Americans, unlike other groups in the United States?”9
A partial explanation for this blind spot can perhaps be found in the Leftism
of the American multicultural debates. Although its goals, strategies, and
tactics have been constantly shifting, the Left - in the U.S. and elsewhere has been primarily oriented to the inclusion of subaltern groups in forms of
life assumed to be universally desirable: the proletariat in the Old Left; women,
racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities in the New. While this brand of politics
is obviously relevant to the demands presented by some socially and economically excluded groups, it is not immediately apparent that it can adequately address the concerns of indigenous peoples. The basic problem is
Native American Political Theory • 175
that while most indigenous groups do not want to be entirely excluded from
non-indigenous societies, most do not want to be entirely included in them
either. Thus, an argument that links recognition and inclusion, and opposes
this couple to misrecognition and exclusion, cannot capture the subtleties of
relations between indigenous peoples and the system of nation-states.
Rorty’s position, inasmuch as it rejects the politics of recognition as such,
would be outside of any paradigm in which indigenous specificity might be
visible, and thus does not even offer a target for critique. Fraser’s argument,
however, is more subtle. In her reinterpretation of recognition as status, she
argues that misrecognition occurs when certain individuals are “prevented
from participating as a peer in social life as a result of institutionalised
patterns of cultural value.”10 While this shift perhaps allows Fraser to avoid
cultural essentialism, it has the unfortunate side effect of reifying and totalising society instead. That is, the reformulation of recognition as status assumes
that there is only one system of social life in which one might participate, or
from which one might be excluded. If we are to recognise the existence - not
to mention the specificity and value - of indigenous societies, then it is clear
that indigenous individuals are always already “peers” within them, to at
least as great an extent as non-indigenous individuals are peers within their
own societies. At the same time, just as indigenous people are systematically
excluded from the social life of the state people, non-indigenous people are
generally excluded from indigenous societies. In speaking only about the
inclusion of all groups within a single society, the reinterpretation of recognition as status fails to fully grasp the existence of relations of power that
exist between disparate identities. This theory therefore cannot comprehend
a situation where a group might desire greater autonomy from, rather than
greater integration within, a dominant form of social life such as a white
settler state.
Although they suffer from their own limits and aporias, liberal theorists of
multiculturalism have shown a greater ability and willingness to confront
this issue. Of particular interest is the recent convergence upon a defence of
what Daniel O’Neill has called a ‘strong multiculturalism’ within liberal
theory. This hybrid position “makes allowances for minority cultural rights,
while remaining simultaneously committed to a core set of individual rights
incapable of being trumped in the name of culture.”11 Thinkers such as Will
176 • Richard Day
Kymlicka, Charles Taylor, and James Tully have argued that indigenous peoples - and other ‘national minorities’ - have a valid claim not only to recognition of their cultures, but also to self-determination via various forms of
self-government. While this line of thought may, in its current form, serve
primarily to assuage the anxieties of semi-peripheral capitalist nation-states
rather than to advance the goals of indigenous peoples, it does challenge a
basic precept of the Western tradition: the idea that there should be equality
within a single system of (re)distribution of goods and services, based on
some set of universally applicable rights and norms.12
This challenge has been clearly articulated by academics and activists
working in the field of Native American political theory.13 Through a creative
revaluation of their own histories in contemporary contexts, writers such as
Taiaiake Alfred, Vine Deloria, Lee Maracle, Georges E. Sioui, and Patricia
Monture-Angus are self-consciously walking the fine line between regressive
cultural essentialism and genocidal ‘integration’ into the system of states.
They have pointed out differences between Native American and European
conceptions of sovereignty; proposed alternative visions of relations between
individuals, human communities, and the natural environment; and they
have challenged the inevitability and desirability of centralised bureaucracy,
capitalism, and the state form.
Despite their interest in dialogue and recognition, the theorists of liberal
multiculturalism have tended to downplay or ignore these dissenting indigenous voices. As Beth Singer has recently pointed out, while liberal multiculturalists have consistently maintained that their models are appropriate to
the aspirations of indigenous peoples, they just as consistently “fail to take
into account any writings by Aboriginals or official statements issued by
Aboriginal organisations.”14 For their part, Native American writers have
tended to present their views as though they are entirely incommensurable
with a monolithic ‘Western tradition’ that has apparently exhausted itself in
the texts of liberal multiculturalism and the policies and laws of the Eurocolonial
nation-states.
In this article I want to sketch out the terrain of this impasse by way of an
examination of the disparate meanings given to the notions of self-determination and federalism within Western and Native American political theory.
Native American Political Theory • 177
An open confrontation between these two traditions reveals a series of linked
disparities that seem to defy any possibility of a ‘fusion of the horizons’ that
separate them.15 An analogous situation exists in political relations between
indigenous communities and the white settler states, with the result that all
attempts to ‘unify’ or ‘reconcile’ these deeply troubled and inextricably
entwined identities have failed.
It is this tension, this seeming impossibility in the face of necessity, that I
want to explore. By working across the Native American and Western traditions, I will try to show that these two paradigms are not as incommensurable as they might appear. If we acknowledge the contributions of certain
‘minor’ literatures to Western social and political thought - I am thinking, in
this case, of Proudhonian federalism - we can find a critique of capitalism,
bureaucracy, and the state form that has strong affinities with the positions
taken up by indigenous writers. An exploration of these affinities may allow
us to chart a non-liberal, non-Left course away from a politics of recognition
based on a reductive - even if ‘differentiated’ - inclusion/exclusion model.
Liberal Multiculturalism and Indigenous Self-Determination
While there is far from complete agreement among those theorists who
advocate a ‘strong’ multiculturalism, several key themes tend to structure the
debates. Foremost among these is the profession of a desire to move beyond
colonial relations of power between the currently dominant ‘state peoples’
and the many groups they have attempted to eliminate or assimilate over
the past centuries. Charles Taylor has been a leading figure here, in advancing an argument that emphasises the importance of ‘recognising’ subaltern
ethnic and racial groups within the system of nation-states. For Taylor, in
modern societies, “our identities are formed in dialogue with others, in
agreement or struggle with their recognition of us.”16 “The recognition I am
talking about,” writes Taylor, “is the acceptance of ourselves by others in our
identity.”17
While its philosophical pedigree may be abstract and Hegelian, Taylor’s
theory of recognition is pragmatically motivated by a desire to maintain the
current allocation of territories between nations and states. As a ‘solution’ to
the ‘problem’ of fragmented identities within the Canadian œcumene, for exam178 • Richard Day
ple, he has argued that English Canadians - as a conquering people - should
recognise French Canadians - as a conquered people - in order to improve
relations between these two ethnocultural groups. This argument can of course
be generalised to cover an ever-expanding network of antagonistic identities,
so that when Taylor allows himself to “dream in colours” for a few paragraphs at the end of Reconciling the Solitudes, he imagines the following scenario for a Canada that has “survived the crisis” of its problematic diversity:
It [the Canada] would unquestionably be dual in one important respect.
There would be two major societies, each defined by its own dominant
language. But each of these societies within itself would be more and more
diverse. First, each would be more and more ethnically varied and, in
different ways, multicultural; second, each would have significant minorities of the other official language; third, each would contain aboriginal
communities with substantial but varying degrees of self-government. 18
It is important to note the precise character of Taylor’s innovation: he moves
away from the singular conception of the nation-state that is typical of the
colonial mentality, and hopes in this way to increase the survival chances of
an ‘integrated’ nations-state composed of a multiplicity of articulations between
identity poles and bureaucratic structures. On this model, indigenous communities figure as one of several identities which will contribute to (be subsumed by) a new form of “post-industrial Sittlichkeit.”19
Will Kymlicka has advocated a similar model as part of his theory of “differentiated citizenship rights.” In this scheme the population of a nation-state
is divided into three categories, each of which is assigned a particular mode
of self-determination. The assignment proceeds according to the ability of
each identity category to claim possession of what Kymlicka calls a “societal
culture”: a set of institutions, based on a shared language, which “provides
access to meaningful ways of life across the full range of human activities social, educational, religious, recreational, economic - encompassing both
public and private spheres.”20 According to Kymlicka, current state peoples
tend to have well-developed societal cultures which have hegemonic status,
and are therefore not in need of “special” rights.21 Subaltern immigrant identities, however, should be granted “polyethnic rights” that will allow them
Native American Political Theory • 179
to retain certain “ethnic differences,” but not to construct their own societal
cultures.22 Finally, national minorities - such as indigenous peoples who have
had their societies violently displaced by colonising forces - deserve special
rights of self-government, which are supposed to enable them to protect and
enhance certain aspects of their pre-existing societal cultures. Through this
system of differential equity, Kymlicka’s system, like Taylor’s, appears to meet
indigenous peoples’ demands for recognition as distinct societies capable of
self-determination.
These models are currently being implemented in Canada, where liberal multiculturalist theory has for many years shared conceptual paradigms and
rhetorical strategies with its state policy cousins.23 For my purposes, though,
the decade of the 1990s was crucial. During this time, the Royal Commission
on Aboriginal Peoples exhaustively analysed and critiqued the Canadian
state’s historical failures of recognition, after which the federal government
“apologised” and expressed its intention to “set a new course in its policies
for Aboriginal people.” This course, like liberal multiculturalist theory, is to
be based on principles of “mutual respect, mutual recognition, mutual responsibility, and sharing.”24 However, while recent court cases - such as the decision in Delgamuukw - have provided legal recognition of certain Aboriginal
rights, they have not significantly altered the Canadian Government’s
position on Aboriginal self-determination.25 Under the current policy, it is
offering specific and limited rights of self-government in exchange for extinguishment of the Aboriginal title it has only just begun to recognise. Policy
statements are clear on this point: self-government rights will be exercised
within the Canadian Constitution, and do not imply a recognition of Aboriginal
sovereignty in the international sense.26 As Dara Culhane has pointed out,
“[t]he Aboriginal title codified by the Supreme Court’s ruling [in Delgamuukw]
remains a subordinate one that constitutes a burden on the Crown’s underlying, radical title. The hovering sovereign’s hegemony remains paramount.”27
The situation in Australia is very similar.28 The analogue to the Delgamuukw
case is the Mabo decision, in which the High Court partially overturned the
doctrine of terra nullius that had been used in the past to deny the rights of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples. After Mabo, the Native Title Act
of 1993 acknowledged that “Indigenous Australians may continue to hold
native title,” and allowed applications for these rights to be “recognised under
180 • Richard Day
Australian law.”29 However, this new regime of recognition and reconciliation contains what might be called a ‘vital flaw’, which is described with brutal honesty in a National Native Title Tribunal fact sheet: “Where native title
rights and the rights of another person conflict, the rights of the other
person always prevail.”30 As in the Canadian case, the Australian State has
maintained possession of radical title to the land, and assumes it has the right
to grant or deny subsidiary title to specific individuals and groups, Aboriginal
or otherwise.31 Once again, despite the high-flying rhetoric of absolution, it
seems that this new regime offers little in the way of a substantial challenge
to the colonial system of racialised domination and exploitation. As Henry
Reynolds has argued, “[t]he High Court’s decision to recognise prior rights
of property but not sovereignty lines Australian law up with the international
lawyers writing at the high noon of imperialism.”32
At this point, it would perhaps be reasonable to ask if the failures of ‘actually existing multiculturalism’ are the result of partial, shoddy, or confused
‘implementations’ of the recognition paradigm, or whether they are inherent
to liberal multiculturalism as such. Given that Hegelian recognition is considered ‘deficient’ if it is not ‘mutual and reciprocal’, it might also be fair to
ask by what right the theorists of recognition and differentiated citizenship
are able to assign rights to others.33 Does there exist a ‘neutral’ point of view
from which a system of differentiated citizenship can be formulated in a just
and fair way? How is it that ‘we’ - whoever ‘we’ are - can be so sure of what
‘they’ - whoever ‘they’ are - really want? And how is it that ‘we’ came to be
in a position of granting or denying recognition to ‘them’ in the first place?
Who is this ‘we’ that gives the gift of liberal multiculturalism?
This question is easy to answer in the case of Charles Taylor who, with his
frequent recourse to the values and traditions of ‘North Atlantic Civilisation’,
is clearly an advocate of the conception of the nation which emerges out of
the European tradition.34 But with Kymlicka this question is not so simple,
as he does not identify himself with any particular culture. Rather, he argues
that the crucial question facing multination states is how to avoid the
“disintegrating effects” of “minority nationalism.”35 Kymlicka’s point of identification, it seems, is not with a particular ethnic group, category of citizenship, or even a particular country, but with the system of states as such. From
this “privileged empty point of universality,” that sets itself outside the realm
Native American Political Theory • 181
of ethnocultural identification, all identities are judged according to their presumed willingness to accept a model of multinational federalism that preserves the current allocation of territories to identities, bureaucratic apparatuses,
and regimes of capital accumulation.36
Of course, some indigenous communities and organisations in Canada and
Australia have endorsed the ‘nations within’ model of self-determination.37
But it would be very difficult to provide support for the claim that the
Aboriginal peoples of Canada, as a monolithic entity, “insist that Canada
must be seen as a multination federation.”38 Indeed, it would be hard to prove
that indigenous peoples in any part of the world, as a homogeneous group,
or even as a linked network of homogenous groups, are unanimously and
unequivocally in favour of any single strategy in their dealings with the system of states. In some cases, the current shifts in policy and theory have been
accepted pragmatically - and reservedly - as the best that is possible at this
particular stage of a continuing struggle. Other communities, organisations,
and individuals, however, have utterly refused to accept the gifts of liberal
multiculturalism, claiming that they represent a “more subtle form of domination than the overt racist and assimilationist policies of previous decades
and centuries.”39 It is to a discussion of these dissenting voices that I now
want to turn.
Self-Determination and Native American Political Theory
Although it presents itself as a realisation of the ideal of equality appropriate to the contemporary condition of fragmented identities, liberal multiculturalism is seen by many indigenous groups as a perpetuation of long-standing
inequalities between colonisers and colonised. Wary of any offer of self-determination on their oppressor’s terms, they have sought other options, including the formation of their own sovereign governments. While this is generally
considered to be a radical aspiration, it would be naive to assume the existence of a simple dichotomy between internal self-government and sovereignty as modes of self-determination. Rather, the meanings of these terms
vary considerably within and across Western and Indigenous discourses.
Before proceeding, it will be necessary to map out some of these conflicting
meanings, so that the specificity of the interventions of Native American
political theory can be grasped.
182 • Richard Day
Within European political thought, self-determination refers to the right of a
‘people’ to determine its own destiny independent of external interference.
After the French and American revolutions, it was assumed that the only
way in which such a right could be exercised was through an attachment to
“a separate, sovereign, independent state.”40 This kind of thinking was also
applied during the period of decolonisation in Latin America and Africa,
when many oppressed peoples sought their liberation through the achievement of a state articulation. In the 1960s, the link between national selfdetermination and statehood was acknowledged in the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights, which affirmed that “[a]ll peoples have the
right . . . to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.”41
However, when the self-determination of indigenous peoples in the settler
states is at issue, a different standard has been applied. 42 It is often claimed,
for example, that with the Marshall decisions in 1831 and 1832, the United
States Supreme Court recognised Indian governments as “viable, functioning political units that exercise inherent sovereign powers.”43 However, it
must also be noted that indigenous groups in the United States retain only
those powers that have not been ‘restricted’ by the US Congress. That is, the
sovereignty of the Indigenous peoples of the United States is limited by, and
subject to, the sovereignty of the white settlers. As mentioned above, this is
precisely the form of attenuated sovereignty that is being offered to indigenous peoples in Canada under the rubric of ‘self-government’. Unfortunately,
various groups and individuals who are in favour of self-government arrangements tend to refer to them as deriving from the ‘inherent sovereignty’ of
indigenous peoples, thus adding to the confusion.
Perhaps because its government has been unwilling to acknowledge even
these limited rights of self-determination, the meaning of the sovereignty
option in Australia is more clear cut. The Australian Provisional Government
(APG) has declared not only that Aborigines possess a right to “control
ourselves on our own land,” but also a right to do so “without interference
from others.” Rather than claiming a remnant or vestige of a prior sovereignty,
the APG issues passports and seeks to create “a nation exercising total jurisdiction over its communities to the exclusion of all others.”44 After staging a
referendum on independence from White Australia, it plans to establish a
Native American Political Theory • 183
“sovereign state for Aborigines” that would have “the same rights, capacities, and recognition as any other nation-state.”45
In the context of indigenous self-determination, then, ‘sovereignty’ can be
invoked either as a justification for secession and the formation of a separate, independent state, or as a basis for limited forms of self-government
within an existing state. But there is also a third pathway to self-determination that invokes the concept of sovereignty only to undermine and eventually discard it. The nations of the Haudenosaunee, or ‘Iroquois Confederacy’
of North America have maintained an ‘unbroken assertion of sovereignty’
through the long years of French, English, American, and Canadian colonialism. “Our belief and faith that we are still an independent nation go back
to the first treaty signed in North America”, Grand Chief Michael Mitchell
has declared.46 On this basis, members of the Mohawk nation of the Haudenosaunee refuse to vote in Canadian elections, and have strongly resisted
intrusions of the Canadian State into their communities.
What is particularly interesting about the Mohawk nation, however, is its
conceptualisation of a path of self-determination that involves neither a recovery of a partial remnant of a sovereignty lost in the past, nor a futural
project of a totalising nation-state. Under the models of self-government and
nation-state sovereignty, it is assumed that indigenous peoples and their
colonisers need only divide or apportion ‘power’ in an appropriate way, and
all will be well. State apparatuses, in concert with capitalist corporations, will
‘develop natural resources’ so as to advance the short-term economic interests of groups and individuals that have previously been left out of this
process. The overcoming of the past achieved by these models is thus
limited to allowing indigenous peoples to become active subjects, rather than
passive objects, of domination and exploitation. That is, redistribution of
sovereignty may indeed challenge the colonial oppressor, but it does not
necessarily challenge the tools of his oppression.47 Thus, according to Taiaiake
Alfred, the term ‘sovereignty’, as an “exclusionary concept rooted in an adversarial and coercive Western notion of power,” is deeply problematic.48 Patricia
Monture-Angus takes a similar line, suggesting that sovereignty has “disparate meanings” in European and Aboriginal discourses.49 For Europeans,
sovereignty is about “rights” and “control of territory,” while for MontureAngus, it involves “responsibility” and “relationship with.”50
184 • Richard Day
The advocates of ‘traditional Aboriginal nationhood’ not only challenge the
accepted meaning of sovereignty in the European sense, but are also critical
of the forms of oppression that are bound up with this conceptual practice.
Therefore, as part of their revaluation of the theory and practice of self-determination, they seek to heal the colonial-capitalist division of their societies
into separate administrative spheres of politics, economics, and culture. The
tendency to perpetuate existing structures of domination under the new name
of ‘self-government’ is of particular concern here. Marie Smallface Marule
notes that “there is a belief among some of our Indian people that by replacing the white bureaucrats . . . with brown people, we will remedy all that is
wrong with our situation.”51 On a similar line, Lee Maracle has suggested
that “certain of the [Aboriginal] elite stood on our heads to climb out of the
mine shaft,” so that “liberation means . . . they become our bosses.”52 Taking
up a position that is consonant with the Weberian critique of rationalisation,
Marule and Maracle argue that the structures and processes of bureaucracy
are oppressive and inefficient as such, regardless of whether they are ‘imposed’
from ‘outside’, or ‘chosen’ from ‘inside’ a community. Taken to its limit, this
critique challenges the legitimacy of the liberal state as such, in positing and positively valuing - a mode of social organisation in which there is “no
absolute authority, no coercive enforcement of decisions, no hierarchy, and
no separate ruling entity.”53
The Native American discourse on self-determination also contains a radical
critique of capitalist social relations. Maracle speaks of her foremothers as
people who believed it was “criminal to use another to enrich oneself; by
this, I understand that exploitation of the land or people, in the interest of
profit, was prohibited.”54 For Marule, capitalist individualism and materialism appear as aspects of a “non-Indian economic system” that threatens to
further the assimilation and extermination of Aboriginal communities and
individuals.55 In countering this tendency, traditional nationhood offers a set
of values that “challenge the destructive and homogenising force of Western
liberalism and free-market capitalism.”56 These values are based on an entirely
different notion of the relationships that prevail among human beings and
between human beings and the natural world.57
Even if some indigenous communities manage to avoid the worst effects of
rational-bureaucratic domination and capitalist exploitation in their quest for
Native American Political Theory • 185
self-government, there remains yet a third ‘gift’ of Western liberalism that
many are reluctant to accept: patriarchy. “The denial of Native womanhood
is the reduction of the whole people to a sub-human level,” writes Lee Maracle.
“The dictates of patriarchy demand that beneath the Native male comes the
Native female.”58 On this point, at least, liberal multiculturalism has had something to say: gender oppression is sometimes considered as an example of a
failure of recognition. Yet, just as often, gender issues are excluded from discussions of multiculturalism, on the argument that cultural, racial and ethnic issues must be treated in their specificity. Finally, when gender is considered,
the simple fact that liberal multiculturalism is a liberal discourse militates
against the appearance of ‘loaded’ concepts like patriarchy and oppression.
A nod to an equality-based or perhaps a differential equality-based form of
liberal feminism is the most one can expect. Given the complex problems facing indigenous women - even within ‘self-governing’ communities - it would
seem that a much more radical stance is necessary. This could begin, perhaps, with the recognition that patriarchy exists, and that racism, sexism, and
capitalism form a linked system of domination and exploitation.
There are of course many questions to be raised regarding the theorisation
and implementation of traditional Aboriginal nationhood. Some of the
problems - the importation of Western structures of patriarchy, bureaucratic
domination and capitalist exploitation - have been discussed above. It should
also be noted, however, that the definition of ‘traditional’ is itself a hotly
contested issue within indigenous communities. As Maracle notes, for some,
it is “traditional” to advocate “the internal apprehension of our children” by
band bureaucracies. For others, this is “in direct contradiction to Aboriginal
laws and values.”59 Similar examples and arguments could be presented for
each of the ways in which Native American political theory tries to differentiate itself from liberal-democratic capitalism. One might also question the
extent to which the elements of a coherent Aboriginal tradition even exist and,
if so, how these practices and ideas might be recovered in the current context.
Similar problems exist with the delineation of Native American political theory’s significant Other. Given the global reach and horrific coherence of
European colonialism, it should not be surprising that indigenous peoples
tend to assume that their concepts, assumptions, and goals are radically
186 • Richard Day
incompatible with a monolithic ‘Western’ world view. It is in this vein that
Mary-Ellen Turpel writes that “[t]he collective or communal base of Aboriginal
life does not really, to my knowledge, have a parallel to individual rights:
the conceptions of [Canadian and Aboriginal] law are simply incommensurable.”60 Or Taiaiake Alfred: “Even as history’s shadow lengthens to mark the
passing of that brutal age [of European colonialism], the Western compulsion to control remains strong.”61 Indeed, the current state of relations between
indigenous peoples and the settler societies makes these declarations of incommensurability seem as accurate as they are disheartening. Liberalism has
strong historical affinities with the capitalist system of states, which it tends
to either assume as a natural backdrop to human life, or to applaud as the
inevitable outcome of human evolution.62 Liberal multiculturalism, while it
has caused some liberal theorists to at least entertain the idea that non-state
peoples might possess certain collective rights, has not challenged this underlying belief. Capitalism rarely appears as an item for discussion in the intercultural dialogue and, as noted above, there is an implicit assumption that
any attempt to alter the current configuration of the system of states can only
lead to violence and disruption. It does seem correct to say, then, that the
Western tradition of liberalism, including its strong multiculturalist variant,
is indeed incommensurable in several ways, and to varying degrees, with
the goals and aspirations of Native American political theory. And, through
the common experience of colonialism, it is quite likely to be at odds
with the aspirations of indigenous peoples elsewhere.
In the face of these considerable obstacles to its further progress, it is quite
possible that the attempt to formulate a Native American mode of self-determination will exhaust itself in the mire of (post) colonial relations of power.
But this need not necessarily be the case. As an attempt to further a holistic
revaluation of indigenous social, cultural, economic, and political forms,
Native American political theory represents a distinct and relevant option to
both self-government and sovereignty on the nation-state model. For this
reason alone, the writers who advance this position are deserving of much
more attention than they have so far received from mainstream liberal multiculturalist theory.
Native American Political Theory • 187
Revisiting the Western Tradition: From Autonomy to Federative
Heteronomy
Having sketched out the difficulties which plague any ‘fusion of the horizons’ between Native American political theory and liberal multiculturalism,
I want to move on to consider the prospects for a different kind of intercultural dialogue. First of all, it must be noted that there is more openness in
traditional Aboriginal nationalism than might appear at first glance. For example, although he often refers to ‘the West’ or ‘the Western tradition’ in the
singular, Alfred also notes that his primary targets are “mainstream Western
notions” of dominion.63 He also acknowledges that a revaluation of Native
American political theory is going to involve taking account of “the good elements” of Western forms.64 “The notion of traditionalism I am promoting,”
writes Alfred, “demands cultural give-and-take with non-indigenous people respect for what both sides have to contribute and share.”65 Second, we must
remember that the resources of Western social and political thought are far
from exhausted by a consideration of liberal multiculturalism. There are other
traditions in the West that are more open to diversity in general, and which
display strong affinities with Native American political theory in particular.
If we proceed for a moment to a higher level of generality and think outside
of the boxes of liberalism, we can see that the fundamental question here
involves the possibility of disparate identities co-existing in contested geographical and symbolic-historical spaces. That is, it involves investigating
new modes of articulation of the universal and particular, new ways of linking subjects, identities, and modes of social-political-economic organisation.66
James Tully has argued that one source of such commonalities is a “hidden
constitutional language” that has “evolved to facilitate the mutual recognition of culturally diverse constitutional negotiators.”67 Although there are
problems with this claim as it stands, Tully’s attempt to construct a common
ground for discussions between Indigenous peoples and the Western nationstates is valuable in that it highlights certain possibilities that are otherwise
obscured. One of these possibilities emerges out of a shared experience of
social and political forms which, in the Western tradition, are considered
under the rubric of federalism.
188 • Richard Day
As mentioned above, the classical liberal model of the nation-state posits
exclusive autonomy for a singular people within a prescribed geographical
area. This is, of course, an ideal limit-case. It has never been achieved in any
actually existing state, and grows increasingly unrealistic under the conditions of globalising capital. But the nation-state remains important as a horizon of the classical liberal imaginary, which allows for diversity in culture,
economy, and polity between states, but demands uniformity on all counts
within them. Because of this baseline assumption of exclusive autonomy,
federalism “is often pictured as a halfway house between a unitary state with
a single central authority, and a confederation, an alliance between states that
retain their separate identities.”68 That is, within liberal theory, federalism is
seen as a way to divide power within and among state forms, and to set out
relations between state forms and nations as sites of subjective identification.
The multination federation advocated by theorists such as Taylor and Kymlicka
fits this model of distributed autonomy, or integration, which allows for diversity of culture within a particular state by admitting the possibility of
multiple national identifications. It is less permissive with regard to polity
and economy, however, in assuming that any subaltern group that is granted
‘national’ status will thereby acquire a subordinate articulation with a capitalist state. For reasons that should be clear from the discussion of Native
American political theory, this assumption is highly problematic, and has
met with a ‘sceptical’ response.69 Indeed, in cases where greater autonomy
has been ‘given’ to Indigenous nations, the existing state people have tended
to maintain a ‘trump card’ that ensures their continued control over the
parameters of autonomy: Congressional jurisdiction over ‘domestic dependent nations’ in the United States; primacy of federal and provincial laws in
Canadian ‘self-government’ arrangements; and in Australia, arms-length tutelage via the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, and the tilted
playing field created by the Native Title Act.
Thus it would seem that even where the hidden language of intercultural
constitutionalism has been brought into the open, it has been unable to
adequately bridge the disparities between indigenous peoples and the
settler states. There are two related problems that may help to account for
these failures. First, the use of the definite article in the invocation of ‘the’
hidden language assumes that there is a single possibility, corresponding to
Native American Political Theory • 189
a necessity that must guide any dialogue. Second, the word ‘hidden’ implies
that this possibility already exists, but has been buried or obscured. After its
‘uncovering’, it would appear to have been brought forth without human
agency or, more precisely, without discursive intervention. As an alternative to
this naturalistic, teleological conception, I would suggest that there be in fact
an infinity of discursive possibilities that could be constructed. The language
that Tully uses in his book, the languages that the settler states are inventing, the languages that indigenous groups are advocating, are all examples
of this even stranger multiplicity which, if we take seriously the radical
potential of the multicultural context, must be engaged in the fullness of its
own diversity.
This kind of engagement needs to be carried out on so many levels I will
not even try to list them. For my purposes here, it will suffice to engage in
a discussion of how the Western concept of federalism might be understood
from within Native American political theory. A central metaphor in the
Haudenosaunee ‘constitutional’ language - which is only one sub-tradition
that might be considered - is that of the ‘Two Row Wampum’. I want to quote
at length from a description of the meaning of this concept from the Haudenosaunee point of view.
When the Haudenosaunee first came into contact with the European nations,
treaties of peace and friendship were made. Each was symbolised by the
Gus-Wen-Teh or Two Row Wampum. There is a bed of white wampum that
symbolises the purity of the agreement. There are two rows of purple, and
those two rows have the spirits of your ancestors and mine. There are three
beads of wampum separating the two rows and they symbolise peace, friendship, and respect.
These two rows will symbolise two paths or two vessels, travelling down
the same rivers together. One, a birch bark canoe, will be for the Indian people, their laws, their customs and their ways. The other, a ship, will be for
the white people and their laws, their customs and their ways. We shall
each travel the river together, side by side, but in our own boat. Neither of
us will try to steer the other’s vessel.70
190 • Richard Day
Despite the many difficulties of translation - not only between two languages
but between imagistic and political-scientific modes of presentation - it seems
clear that the integration model, with its propensity to install systems which
allow the canoe to be remotely controlled from the bridge of the boat, violates the principle of heteronomy that informs the Two-Row wampum model,
and is therefore inadequate to the task of guiding relations between the
Haudenosaunee nations and the settler states of North America.71
A workable alternative can perhaps be found in the texts of Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon. As a self-professed anarchist, we might expect Proudhon to simply reject the state in the name of unbridled individual liberty. But in his later
writings he arrives at a nuanced understanding of the political principle that
takes him far beyond the simple rejection of authority as such. Rather, Proudhon
argues that authority and liberty exist in a state of continuous tension, forming “a couple . . . whose terms, though indissolubly linked together, are nevertheless irreducible one to the other, and remain, despite all our efforts,
perpetually at odds.”72 For Proudhon, all political systems, from monarchy
to anarchy, are based on a ‘compromise’ between these forces. Up to this
point, his argument sounds distinctly liberal. A key difference, however, is
that the form of federalism he advocates is based on equal and reciprocal contracts between diverse groupings - ranging from individuals to families to
towns and states - in which “the contracting parties retain more sovereignty
and a greater scope of action than they give up.”73
Proudhon is thus vigorously opposed to ‘top-down’ modes of organisation
such as those advocated by liberal multiculturalism.74 Indeed, he argues that
if the principle of retention of autonomy is not respected, federalist systems
are doomed to devolve into the forms with which we are already too familiar. In such cases:
The confederated states [are] reduced to administrative districts, branches,
or local offices. Thus transformed, the body politic may be termed republican, democratic, or what you will; it will no longer be a state constituted
by a plenitude of autonomies, it will no longer be a confederation . . . The
republic will become unitary . . . and will be on the road to despotism.75
In federal systems based on a plenitude of autonomies, there is no ‘hovering sovereign’ that would be capable of devolving or granting rights or
Native American Political Theory • 191
privileges to subordinate entities. Rather, the constituent entities grant certain
limited rights to the larger and broader levels of the federation.
Although Proudhon’s text focuses on political-bureaucratic arrangements, he
also addresses economic considerations, arguing that “if the federal order
serves merely to preserve the anarchy of capital and commerce . . . [it] will
be unstable.”76 Clearly, for him minimal government does not imply the free
reign of capital. Rather, one of the purposes of a federation is “to protect the
citizens of the federated states from capitalist and financial exploitation.”77
Building upon his earlier work on mutualism, Proudhon envisions the agroindustrial federation as a heteronomous association of disparate social,
political, cultural and economic forms that would replace existing structures
of domination and exploitation.
In his critique of bureaucracy, centralisation, and capitalism, Proudhon
produces arguments that resonate strongly with Native American political
theory. But his ideas cannot be recommended without reservation for a radicalised politics of recognition and coexistence. Some of the difficulties with
Proudhonian federalism have been noted in a discussion of George Woodcock’s
attempted revival of Proudhon’s ideas in the early 1970s: Proudhon is Utopian,
his vision is unrealistic; decentralised societies cannot stand against centralised
ones, it is ‘centralise or die’; local autonomy is more likely to give rise to
xenophobia than progressive ideas; and participation is not necessarily a valuable commodity, as it were, in the Western democracies.78 While these critiques are certainly relevant, a careful reading of Proudhon’s text shows that
he was aware of, and attempts to respond to, most of them. Ultimately, they
are indicative of incommensurabilities between the liberal-Marxist and anarchist paradigms, rather than of contradictions in Proudhon’s line of reasoning or a priori limits to the possibilities of human social organisation.
There are other more pressing problems, though, which are immanent to the
discursive context in which Proudhon was operating, and which necessarily
emerge in an attempt to creatively reconstruct Proudhonian federalism as an
option for today’s societies. Proudhon’s conception of the state, for example,
is rather idiosyncratic and in need of clarification. When he writes that “a
confederation is not exactly a state; it is a group of sovereign and independ-
192 • Richard Day
ent states, associated by a pact of mutual guarantees,” it is not immediately
clear why this form of organisation would be immune to the critique of the
state form as an agent of rational-bureaucratic domination.79 Is it adequate
to simply federate a network of states in order to remove their offending
qualities? To understand Proudhon’s argument it is necessary to note that he
makes use of a dual conception of the state. When he uses the term in the
singular, ‘the state’ appears as an organ of ‘pure administration’ that would
carry out specific tasks delegated to it by the confederated ‘states’, in the
plural. It would seem that the states are perhaps better thought of as identity- or affinity-based groups that have delegated certain functions to a limited bureaucracy. This reading is supported by the fact that when Proudhon
discusses the kinds of entities that might be federated, he refers to a variety
of forms that includes, but far exceeds, the nation-state. The question remains
unresolved in his text, however, and must remain unresolved here as well.
An even greater difficulty, for which Proudhon’s text again offers no easy
remedy, can be found in his tendency to cast agro-industrial federation as a
teleologically necessary ‘final solution’ to all of the problems of humanity.
Just as Marx and Engels argued that the conflict between bourgeoisie and
proletariat would inevitably result in the emergence of a classless society,
Proudhon clearly believes - or at least wants his readers to believe - that if
we follow his lead, “the opposition of [the] principles [of authority and liberty] will be seen at last as the condition for universal equilibrium.”80 As has
been pointed out by a number of contemporary theorists of radical democracy, however, a society in which struggle has ceased can only be a totalitarian society.81 Thus, despite his observation - now further verified by history that in communist forms of government “power is exercised in an undivided
fashion by the collectivity just as it was before by the king alone,” Proudhon
was unable to see the totalitarian elements of his own vision.82
In the work of later writers this noxious Hegelian residue is at least partially
removed from the theory of anarchist federalism. Kropotkin’s reading of
Proudhon was crucial to the formation of the ideas of Gustav Landauer, who
produced a very interesting - but mostly ignored - theory of social change.
Against the grain of both Marxist orthodoxy and social-democratic revisionism, and against the more ‘voluntarist’ anarchists of his time, Landauer argued
Native American Political Theory • 193
that the transformation of capitalist society could not be achieved by either
instantaneous revolution or slow reform. Rather, new institutions had to be
created alongside the currently dominant society. “Let us destroy,” Landauer
suggested, “mainly by means of the gentle, permanent, and binding reality
that we build.”83 To the extent that it does not seek an abrupt and total transition away from capitalist modes of social organisation, this strategy of
“structural renewal” displays a willingness to coexist with the other that is
uncommon within any branch of the Western tradition.84
Also of interest here is Landauer’s insistence that the building of socialism which might best be read as a catch-all term for “those social forms which
will supersede the state and capitalism” - will require a spirit of creativity
and improvisation. “We need attempts,” he argues. “We need the expedition
of a thousand men to Sicily. We need these precious Garabaldi-natures and
we need failures upon failures and the tough nature that is frightened by
nothing.” 85 This is to say that the subject of structural renewal, like the
subject of post-Marxist radical democracy, is not a ‘mass’ man or woman who
pre-exists his or her articulation by particular struggles. Rather, “the revolutionary subject can only be created via the revolution, through a process of
positive feedback that must begin and continue as a proliferation of a large
number of small struggles.”86 These struggles could be provisionally linked
by shifting networks of affinities, but never totalised - or even pluralised or
quasi-universalised - through the coercive mediation of a state form.
Of course, both Kropotkin and Landauer believed in the Revolution, and thus
in the final analysis were not able to avoid the millenarian and totalitarian
tendencies of 19th and early 20th-century radical thought. And, like many
anarchists of our own era, they believed that power was all-pervasive and
necessarily took the form of domination. If anarchist federalism is to enjoy
greater relevance today, it will be necessary to read Proudhon and his successors against the grain of their Utopianism, by privileging those moments
in their texts where they appeal to “the fecundity of the unexpected” over
those where they try to present a panacea for the human condition.87 It will
also be necessary to explore certain links between anarchism and poststructuralism, in order to arrive at a more nuanced theory of power and resistance. With these reservations in mind, though, I hope to have shown that
there is more than one possible language that could be used in dialogues
194 • Richard Day
between Indigenous peoples and Western identities. I also hope to have shown
that our task in intercultural discussions is not to ‘uncover’ a single common
language, but to engage in the creation of a diversity of languages that corresponds to the diversity of the traditions we seek to accommodate.
Conclusion: Postpostcolonialism?
In a radicalised politics of recognition based on Proudhonian federalism and
the Two Row Wampum model, there would be no place for discussions of
the possible gifts that ‘we’, as a privileged group, might or might not bestow
upon ‘them’ as subordinate groups. The problem with this kind of talk is that
it emerges out of an inadequately self-reflexive conception of the postcolonial context. This context is postcolonial, in the positive sense that the discussion is happening at all. But it is postcolonial in the negative sense that
the parameters of the discussion are still set by state peoples who are reluctant to give up the advantages they have gained through a history of domination and exploitation. Although it has been difficult enough to face
colonialism, it will be necessary to question the postcolonial condition as well,
by moving away from models of ‘integration’ in which state peoples ‘allow’
non-state peoples to be subsumed within the liberal-capitalist œcumene.
This is a challenge that will be difficult for liberal multiculturalism to meet,
given its fundamental commitment to capitalism, possessive individualism,
and the political systems of mass-representative democracy. Limited forms
of self-government are now being granted to indigenous peoples and other
‘national minorities’, but these measures have proven inadequate. Conflicts
have not subsided, but have continued and multiplied. Unless the policy of
domesticating difference through integration succeeds where past attempts
have failed, it will become increasingly necessary for state peoples to accept
diversity not only at the level of cultural symbols, but at all levels of social,
political, and economic organisation. This means that future intercultural discussions will have to leave behind state-based liberal-capitalist federalism,
and focus on the development of more heteronomous systems. A difficult
choice faces liberal multiculturalism: in order to become what it says it wants
to be, it will have to sacrifice much of what it has always been.
*
Richard J.F. Day, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Queen’s University,
Canada.
Native American Political Theory • 195
Notes
1
See Richard Rorty, “Is ‘Cultural Recognition’ a Useful Concept for Leftist Politics?”
Critical Horizons, 2000, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 8. In the same volume, Nancy Fraser, “Why
Overcoming Prejudice is Not Enough: A Rejoinder to Richard Rorty,” pp. 21-22.
2
Todd Gitlin describes how, in the late 1960s, “the principle of separate organisation on behalf of distinct interests raged through ‘the movement’ with amazing
speed. On the model of Blacks’ demands came those of feminists, Chicanos, American
Indians, gays, lesbians. One grouping after another insisted on the recognition of
difference and the protection of their separate and distinct spheres.” See The Twilight
of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Cultural Wars, New York, Metropolitan
Books, 1995, p. 100. In these heady days, cultural politics were seen as a means
to the end of radical social and political transformation. With the rise of the New
Right in the 1980s, however, there was a “concentration of accumulated conflicts
and frustrations concerning race/ethnic relations into institutions of education
and toward a narrowly defined realm of culture.” It is this highly politicised, symbolically open, but perversely non-radical notion of culture that informs multiculturalism in the United States today. See Dennis J. Downey, “From Americanisation
to Multiculturalism: Political Symbols and Struggles for Cultural Diversity in 20thcentury American Race Relations,” Sociological Perspectives, vol. 42, no. 2, p. 254.
3
See Nathan Glazer, Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy,
New York, Basic Books, 1983. See also Michael Walzer, “Comment,” ed., Amy
Gutmann, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1994, pp. 100-101.
4
Canada, Multiculturalism Act, S.C. 1988, c. 31.
5
Australia, Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, “DIMA Fact Sheet
8. The Evolution of Australia’s Multicultural Policies,” 2000, <www.immi. gov.au/
facts/08mult.htm>.
6
In his book Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 127, Will Kymlicka has stressed that the goal of his theory of multicultural citizenship is merely to “ratify and explain” multiculturalism
as state policy, and not to bring about any great conceptual innovations. This tendency has been noticed by Ian Angus, who suggests that “the practice of multiculturalism in English Canada has proceeded further in its everyday, institutional,
and policy contexts than it has a social and political philosophy”. A Border Within:
National Identity, Cultural Plurality, and Wilderness, Montreal & Kingston, McGillQueen’s Press, 1997, p. 137. Indeed, it is likely that some of the most interesting
possibilities of Canadian multiculturalism have been obscured or left unexplored
196 • Richard Day
precisely because contemporary theory has been following the lead of the state
policy discourse.
7
Canada, Standing Committee on Multiculturalism, Multiculturalism: Building the
Canadian Mosaic, Ottawa, Supply and Services Canada, 1987, p. 87.
8
Australia, Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, “Fact Sheet 8.”
9
Hilary N. Weaver, “Indigenous People in a Multicultural Society: Unique Issues
for Human Services,” Social Work, vol. 43, no. 3, p. 203.
10
Fraser, “Rejoinder,” p. 23.
11
Daniel I. O’Neill, “Multicultural Liberals and the Rushdie Affair: A Critique of
Kymlicka, Taylor, and Walzer,” Review of Politics, 1999, vol. 61, no. 2, p. 223.
12
For an excellent discussion of the relation between multiculturalism and settler
anxiety, see Elizabeth Povinelli, “The State of Shame: Australian Multiculturalism
and the Crisis of Indigenous Citizenship. (Intimacy),” Critical Inquiry, 1998, vol.
24, no. 2, pp. 575-611.
13
I have chosen this term because it is used by Taiaiake Alfred, one of the writers
who includes himself within the tradition I am attempting to engage. See his book
Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, Don Mills, Ontario, Oxford
University Press, 1999. As is the case with all discourses, the objects, boundaries,
limits, and the name of ‘Native American political theory’ are ill-defined and highly
contested.
14
Beth J. Singer, Pragmatism, Rights, and Democracy, New York, Fordham University
Press, 1999. It should be noted that this critique is directed particularly against
Charles Taylor and applies in the Canadian context. But a close reading of the
major theorists of liberal multiculturalism will show it to be of wider validity.
15
Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” ed., Amy Gutman, Multi-culturalism
and the Politics of Recognition, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 67.
16
Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity, Concord, Anansi, 1991, pp. 45-46.
17
Charles Taylor, Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism,
Montreal & Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993, p. 190.
18
Ibid., p. 200.
19
Charles Taylor, Hegel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975, p. 461.
20
Will Kymlicka, Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada,
Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 27.
21
Ibid., p. 140.
22
Ibid., pp. 45-49.
23
For a detailed discussion of the relations between Canadian State policy and liberal multiculturalism, see Richard J.F. Day, Multiculturalism and the History of
Canadian Diversity, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2000.
Native American Political Theory • 197
24
Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Gathering
Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan, Ottawa, Minister of Public Works and
Government Services, p. 2.
25
See Delgamuukw v. R, Reasons for Judgement (CJ McEachern), Victoria, BC: Supreme
Court of BC, 1991.
26
Canada, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Aboriginal SelfGovernment, Ottawa, DIAND, 1997.
27
Dara Culhane, The Pleasure of the Crown: Anthropology, Law and First Nations,
Vancouver, Talonbooks, 1998, p. 367.
28
For an excellent comparative discussion see Paul Havemann, ed., Indigenous Peoples’
Rights in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, Auckland, University of Oxford Press,
1999.
29
Australia, National Native Title Tribunal, “Native Title Facts,” 2000, <www.nntt.gov.au/
ntf_html/ntf_1a.html>.
30
Ibid.
31
Frank Brennan, One Land, One Nation, Queensland, University of Queensland Press,
1995, pp. 19-20.
32
See Henry Reynolds, Aboriginal Sovereignty: Reflections on Race, State and Nation,
New South Wales, Allen and Unwin, 1996, p. 13. The current Prime Minister’s
consistent refusal to acknowledge his nation’s colonial legacy and begin negotiations with Aboriginal groups only heightens the impression that Anglo-Celtic
Australia is being dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.
33
For an extended discussion of this point, see Day, Multiculturalism and the History
of Canadian Diversity, pp. 35-38.
34
Taylor, “Politics of Recognition,” p. 71.
35
Kymlicka, Finding Our Way, p. 132.
36
See Slavoj ò Ziìzek, “Multiculturalism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism,” New Left Review, 1997, vol. 225, p. 44.
37
See Menno Boldt and J. Anthony Long, “Native Indian Self-Government: Instrument
of Autonomy or Assimilation?” eds., M. Boldt and J. Long, Governments in Conflict:
Provinces and Indian Nations in Canada, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1988,
p. 51. For the Australian case, see Reynolds, Aboriginal Sovereignty, pp. 136-154.
38
Kymlicka, Finding Our Way, p. 146.
39
Marianne Boelscher-Ignace and Ron Ignace, “The Old Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?
Canadian Aboriginal Peoples and Multiculturalism,” ed., Dieter Haselbach, Multiculturalism in a World of Leaking Boundaries, Munster, LIT Verlag, 1998, p. 153.
40
E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 102.
41
Cited in Patrick Macklem, “Normative Dimensions of the Right of Aboriginal Self-
198 • Richard Day
Government,” Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Aboriginal Self-Government:
Legal and Constitutional Issues, Ottawa, Minister of Supply and Services Canada,
1995, pp. 23-24.
42
The United Nations has refused to recognise indigenous groups within settler
states as ‘peoples’, and does not recognise their right to secede from already existing states. See Ibid., 25.
43
This argument is made, although not entirely uncritically, in Kirke Kickingbird,
“Indian Sovereignty: The American Experience,” eds., Little Bear, Boldt, and Long,
Pathways to Self-Determination, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1984, pp.
50-51.
44
Aboriginal Provisional Government, “Intellectual Prisoners,” The APG Papers,
Hobart, Australia Deep South Sovereign Press, 1992.
45
Ibid., “Towards Aboriginal Sovereignty.”
46
Grand Chief Michael Mitchell, “Akwesasne: An Unbroken Assertion of Sovereignty,”
ed., Boyce Richardson, Drum Beat: Anger and Renewal in Indian Country, Toronto,
Summerhill Press, 1989, p. 109.
47
I do not wish to suggest that the APG, for example, will necessarily fail to achieve
certain reforms to, or differentiations from, the dominant model of sovereignty
within the liberal capitalist system of nation-states. Rather, I am suggesting that
the dangers of this model need to be acknowledged as persistent and complex.
48
Alfred, Peace, Power, p. 51.
49
Patricia Monture-Angus, Journeying Forward: Dreaming First Nations’ Independence,
Halifax, Fernwood Press, 1999, p. 35.
50
Ibid., pp. 35-36.
51
Marie Smallface Marule, “Traditional Indian Government: Of the People, by the
People, for the People,” eds., Leroy Little Bear et al., Pathways to Self-Determination:
Canadian Indians and the Canadian State, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1984,
p. 40.
52
Lee Maracle, I am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism, Vancouver,
Press Gang Publishers, 1996, p. 52.
53
Alfred, Peace, Power, p. 56.
54
Maracle, I Am Woman, p. 41.
55
Marule, “Traditional Indian Government,” p. 39.
56
Alfred, Peace, Power, p. 60.
57
For commonalities between this point of view and that advanced by some Australian
Aborigines, see Pearl King, “Pearl King’s Aspirations for the Future,” Social Alternatives, 1998, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 15-17.
58
Maracle, I Am Woman, p. 17.
59
Ibid., p. 38.
Native American Political Theory • 199
60
Mary Ellen Turpel, “Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian Charter: Interpretive
Monopolies, Cultural Differences,” Canadian Human Rights Yearbook, 1989-90, p. 30.
61
Alfred, Peace, Power, p. xi.
62
Perhaps the most celebrated proponent of this re-inversion of Hegel is Francis
Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man, New York, Free Press,
1992.
63
Alfred, Peace, Power, p. 5.
64
Ibid., p. 28.
65
Ibid., p. xviii.
66
For an extended theoretical discussion of the meanings of this task, see Ernesto
Laclau, “Universalism, Particularism, and the Question of Identity,” in Emancipations,
London, Verso, 1996.
67
James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 57.
68
Samuel LaSelva and Richard Vernon, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity . . . and Federalism,” eds., Martin Westmacott and Hugh Mellon, Challenges to Canadian Federalism, Scarborough, Prentice Hall, 1998, p. 30.
69
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, p. 53.
70
Grand Chief Michael Mitchell, “Akwesasne: An Unbroken Assertion of Sovereignty,”
ed., Boyce Richardson, Drum Beat: Anger and Renewal in Indian Country, Toronto,
Summerhill Press, 1989, pp. 109-110, emphasis added.
71
In order to make a broader claim, that is that the integration model is problematic for other Native American communities, it would be necessary to engage in
a level of comparative political and theoretical analysis that is beyond the scope
of this paper. However, much evidence points to the conclusion that limited selfgovernment within the system of states is often grudgingly accepted as the best
possible option for self-determination given the current state of relations of power
between indigenous peoples and white settlers.
72
P.-J. Proudhon, The Principle of Federation, Toronto, University of Toronto Press,
1979, p. 6.
73
Ibid., p. 43.
74
Contemporary anarchist and post-structuralist theorists generally see the top-down
versus bottom-up distinction as too simplistic. Rather, after Foucault, we need to
conceive power as dispersed in networks rather than as concentrated at the top
of pyramidal structures. See Todd May, The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist
Anarchism, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994, p. 51. For further discussion of this point, see Richard J.F. Day, “Ethics, Affinity, and the Coming
Communities,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2001, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 21-38.
75
Proudhon, The Principle, pp. 40-41.
200 • Richard Day
76
Ibid., p. 67.
77
Ibid., p. 70.
78
See the special issue of Canadian Forum for April 1972.
79
Proudhon, The Principle, p. 40.
80
Ibid., p. 67.
81
See Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, London,
Verso, 1985.
82
Proudhon, The Principle, p. 15.
83
Gustav Landauer, For Socialism, St. Louis, Telos Press, 1978, p. 83.
84
For a fascinating discussion of the concept of structural renewal and its burial
under the weight of Marxism, see Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, Boston, Beacon
Press, 1958.
85
Landauer, For Socialism, p. 62.
86
Ibid., p. 85.
87
P.-J. Proudhon, ed., Stewart Edwards, Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,
London, 1970, p. 104.
Native American Political Theory • 201