Aboriginality multiculturalism, and liberal rights philosophy

Inasmuch as Aboriginal peoples today are, in one manner or another, encapsulated within sovereign states not of their own making, the politics of Aboriginal identity throws out special challenges. This article addresses some of them: the separate, even contradictory, cognitions of ‘place’ between Aboriginal and, say, Immigrant; the present inappropriateness and insufficiency of Western liberal rights philosophy, along with multiculturalism, respecting aboriginality; the distorting (often enigmatically so) and divisive colonial legacies as Aboriginals themselves engage in the politics of their identity. The case of the Mohawks of Kahnawake, outside Montreal, is presented as an illustrative counterpoint to the political philosophy of Will Kymlicka and Charles Taylor.