Indigenous Peoples: Caught in a Perpetual Human Rights Prison

Abstract

This paper examines liberal theorists such as Habermas and James in relation to Indigenous peoples inclusion within nations states like Canada. The author argues that although these theorists have much to contribute in terms of increasing Indigenous democratic inclusion and rights, they are more destructive to Indigenous peoples integrity as peoples in the end. This is because they are unable to satisfactorily account for the immoral inclusion of Indigenous peoples as citizens of a state they did not consent to belonging and moreover contribute to a sense of individual human rights characterization of Aboriginal rights that is inconsistent with a true recognition of Indigenous peoples as independent and sovereign with rights that can't be determined fairly by the existing mechanisms of the state such as its courts. Liberalism and the kind of human rights it envisions for Aboriginal peoples becomes a straight-jacket rather than emancipatory.

Keywords: Indigenous peoples, Aboriginal peoples, Indigenous democratic inclusion, individual human rights, independence, sovereignty, human rights, Liberalism