Cultures autochtones et libéralisme au Canada: les vertus médiatrices du communautarisme libéral de Charles Taylor

• Published in: Canadian Journal of Political Science
• Main Author: Karmis, Dimitrios
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1993
• Subjects: Sociology and Political Science; Canada; First Nations
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008423900002468; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0008423900002468

Abstract The Constitution Act , 1982 recognized certain rights for aboriginal peoples. These rights were to be identified and defined subsequently. Ten years later, after several rounds of negotiations, the question of the recognition and definition of an aboriginal right to self-government remains unresolved. Many specialists claim that the problems faced during these negotiations result from the incompatibility between the main philosophical traditions guiding the actors. Through an analysis of the relationship between the cosmology underlying the aboriginal demands on the one hand and three of the main trends in contemporary Canadian liberal political philosophy on the other hand, this article tries to shed some light on the philosophical incompatibility thesis. While a strictly individualist liberalism rejects outright the notion of collective rights and Will Kymlicka's revisionist liberal individualism limits considerably the scope of an aboriginal right to self-government, communitarian liberalism, like that of Charles Taylor, seems to provide a favourable framework for the integration of cultural co-existence with the First Nations, without repudiating its attachment to fundamental individual rights and freedoms.