Why Will Kymlicka Views Aboriginal Rights As A Class Of Minority Rights

In order to answer the question of why Will Kymlicka views Aboriginal rights as a class of minority rights, I must first establish what kind of person Kymlicka represents, and the beliefs that he holds. Kymlicka is a Canadian liberal political philosopher known for his work on multiculturalism (Will). He believes in moral individualism, which asserts importance on the individual as the focus of rights, value, and moral worth. To say it simply, each individual person should be treated both equally and fairly. Kymlicka also thinks that liberals have not taken issues such as the differences in culture seriously. He recognizes the unfairness between dominant cultures, mainly that of the Western Europeans, and minority cultures. He also pointed

However, we need to keep in the back of our minds that Aboriginal and minority peoples have very distinct differences that prevent us from grouping both of them under a singular, common name. To start, I first want to define both Aboriginal and minority, using definitions that I have learned from our classes, to sort of highlight their differences. I think it is imperative to define each term, as the topics we discuss contain a plethora of messy language. In order for someone to be labeled as “Aboriginal”, they (their people) must be indigenous to the given area of land before the arrival of settlers. In our case, the Aboriginal people of Canada (legal and constitutional term) are the First Nations (Indians), Inuit (Eskimos), and the Métis. Interesting to point out that all three of these groups currently do not represent the majority of Canada, but I will come back to this later. The term “Minority (group)” is defined as a category of people differentiated from the social majority. In Canada there are three nationalities, the English, the French, and the Aboriginal peoples. I bet anyone could take an educated guess that the minority of these three groupings is the Aboriginal peoples. One reason Kymlicka views Aboriginal rights as a class of minority rights is

However it is not simply the numbers that make them a minority. The real similarity is in the treatment and lack of preservation of both cultures. Kymlicka argues that culture is a primary good, meaning the government has an obligation to protect and value all different cultures. The dilemma here is that the majority cultures will always remain on top. For example, here in the United States, also all public school are taught in English, and the problem of someone not speaking English never even occurred to me. By having public schools taught in English, it diminishes and threatens the presence of other cultures. It is hard to grasp no question, but just by being the majority, in this case the Western European culture, we automatically discourage the use of, and ignore, any other different or less popular cultures. This is fundamentally unfair if culture is a primary good. This is what places those Aboriginal people in the minority category, even though they are still Aboriginal. In Canada, even though the Aboriginal peoples are in the minority, they were still present during the founding of Canada, which hold significant