Citizenship is understood as shared membership in a society, accomplished through according civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. By guaranteeing these rights, the state ensures its own health and stability. If rights are withheld or violated, citizens will feel marginalized, unable to participate, and the state becomes less secure and less governable.

When one thinks of the evolution of Canada over a period of 400 years, the tendency is to assume that citizen- ship rights have unfolded in an expansionist and progres- sive way. But, as this discussion will show, the development of citizenship rights within Canada has been narrow and selective. When advancement has occurred, it has been spo- radic and always resisted by the state.

This article looks at the citizenship rights of two groups of Canadians over the past 400 years: women and Aboriginal peoples. I call these citizens ”œcitizens-minus,” because both groups’ citizenship has been systematically marginalized and denigrated over the period, even though women and Aboriginal peoples are central to the very fabric of our national identity. Aboriginal women’s citizenship has been doubly compromised where gender and race intersect.

The long view of 400 years reveals that the official Canadian vision of citizenship has been severely limit- ed by a concept of ”œidentity” that is synonymous with homogeneity. This explains the continuous overt and covert policy of assimilation, which required increasingly invasive paternalistic measures to erode the sphere of action and recourse of women and, more violently, Aboriginal peoples. I argue here that Canadians must critically examine and rethink the underlying values and assumptions of Canadian citizenship that have caused women and Aboriginal peoples to be left on the margins.

One of the most important and influential treatises on citizenship and participation was Rousseau’s Social Contract, written in 1762. Although Rousseau’s work influenced the writing of many constitutions, women and Aboriginal peo- ples were never included in ”œwe the people.” Instead, women were simply made invisible, subsumed under the marriage contract. When not silenced or ignored, their voic- es, like Aboriginal voices, were interpreted and legislated through male, British, Protestant social constructs. Around the same time, the English political philosopher John Locke’s assertion that the ”œAboriginal people merely roamed over the land and were not in the habit of cultivating the soil” legitimized the almost complete takeover of Aboriginal lands by the British. In short, women and Aboriginal groups saw their rights and freedoms increasingly restricted with the spread of British colonization, influenced by European thinkers with racist and sexist visions of citizenship.

When the French military arrived in the ”œNew” World and estab- lished Quebec City in 1608, the Aboriginal peoples were full participating citizens of the continent ”” they governed themselves, earned a liveli- hood, participated in an economy, entered into treaties, practised their spiritual and cultural beliefs, spoke their own languages, educated their children as they saw fit and migrated as was necessary.

At first, the relationship of the Aboriginal peoples with the colonial immigrants was one of equal citizen- ship ”” a nation-to-nation relation- ship where the Aboriginal peoples exercised their full citizenship rights. The British considered  them to be military allies and expressed a mutual co-existence policy in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. The proclamation gave the Crown a monopoly on land purchases from tribal groups and established the colonial authorities as pro- tectors. Over time, the process under the proclamation evolved into a treaty-making system where numer- ous peace, land and friendship treaties were signed between 1871 and 1908.

But by 1830, the policy of equal citizenship for the Aboriginal popula- tion had already begun to deteriorate. The British need for military assistance decreased as the need for more land for settlers steadily increased. Formerly equal Aboriginal citizens became ”œciti- zens-minus” ”” downgraded and devalued from fully self-determining citizens to wards of the government.

Upon confederation in 1867, the new Parliament enthusiastically accel- erated the homogenization of the Canadian identity to fit either one of the two groups that formed the federa- tion ”” the English or the French. Aboriginal peoples, who had occupied the land for millennia, were left out. The new Constitution not only failed to bestow citizenship rights on them, it gave the federal government exclu- sive control over ”œIndian lands, prop- erty and Indian funds.” In 1876 the first Indian Act was passed, setting out a regime of almost total control over every aspect of life for Indians, with the ultimate goal of assimilation. In 1880, a separate Indian Department was created to implement the Act.

Shortly thereafter, the govern- ment engaged the assistance of missionaries to begin the process, in the words of the then deputy superintend- ent of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott, ”œto kill the Indian in the child” through an Indian residen- tial school system that would last for 150 years. The forced internment of status Indian children under the age of 18 in residential schools was the most egregious and harmful assimilation project of all. Priests, Indian agents and police officers forcibly took chil- dren from their families and placed them in boarding schools. Here they were indoctrinated with the belief that their languages and cultures were infe- rior and unacceptable for Canadian citizenship and had to be replaced with European ways.

The Indian Act defined who was an Indian and who was not. If a person fell within the definition of Indian, the government became their legal guardian, and they were treated as if they were chil- dren. Those who fell outside the definition became non- status Indians, legally quali- fying for full Canadian citizenship, but seldom enjoying it because of dis- crimination against their racial identity. The Act also gave Indians protection from taxes, protect- ed reserve lands and provided benefits. From the Indian perspective, as much as it was hated, the Indian Act came to represent the one concrete link to unique treaty status and Aboriginal rights entitlement, which were coveted.

Canada, on the other hand, encouraged Indians to relinquish their Indian status and assimilate through a system of incentives. The law made it clear that full citizenship rights could be enjoyed only if Indians abandoned their status or did something that disqualified them from being registered as an Indian. For example, an Indian as defined in the Indian Act could not drink alcohol in a public place, vote in elections or obtain a university education.

A classic example of disqualifica- tion was where an Indian woman married a non-Indian man. She and her children automatically lost their Indian status, taking on the citizen- ship of the husband. Even if she divorced or became a widow she could never return to her reserve to re-claim her rights under the Indian Act. Indian veterans did not even qualify for the veterans’ pensions or compensation received by Canadian soldiers.

Although the incentives to enfran- chise were great and the refusal to do so punitive, Canada’s ”œgradual civiliza- tion” scheme to assimilate its Aboriginal citizens in this way was a complete failure. From the nineteeth century onwards, the vast majority of status Indians refused to become full Canadian citizens under the condi- tions set by the government in the Indian Act. Instead, they insisted on retaining their independence and sep- arate identity, even though it came at great cost to themselves and their communities. Under the negligent paternalism of the Indian Act, many basic social programs like health, edu- cation and housing were (and are still) severely underfunded and badly man- aged. Almost one-half of First Nations children today live in poverty; chronic illness is of epidemic proportions and almost one-quarter of on-reserve First Nations citizens live in substandard housing. Suicide rates are more than six times higher than the national average; for Inuit youth they are eleven times higher. Although Aboriginal peoples make up 3 percent of the national population, they repre- sent almost one-third of those incar- cerated or with a criminal record. Of the 55 Aboriginal languages, only three remain strong.

Status Indians were finally granted the right to vote in 1960, but to this day their representation in mainstream political institutions is almost zero. It was not until 1985 that the injustices created by enfranchisement schemes were partially corrected by Bill C-31, which restored full Indian status to Indian women who married non-Indians and to others whose status was unfairly taken away. Veterans still have yet to receive equal compensation compared with non-Aboriginal veterans.

For women, a highly contest- ed area affecting their rights as citizens was the official view of marriage. Whereas Indian women had a lower status imposed on them if they insist- ed on retaining their Aboriginal identity, the only choice non- Aboriginal women had to pre- s e rve their rights was not to marry. Women lost their civil rights upon marriage, and in the event that they had a child out of wedlock, they had no economic or civil rights. They lost title to their property as well as the rents on that property, which were transferred to their husbands, whether the couple remained together or not. In 1885, males of ”œright race” were eligible to vote if they owned property or were married to women who owned proper- ty, but their wives, even though they couldn’t vote, were liable for the prop- erty tax.

In the case of marriage breakup, women had even fewer rights. In Nova Scotia in 1892, for example, an abandoned wife dared to sell the family bull to feed her starving children. Despite the common law rule that a husband was responsible for provid- ing his wife and children with the ”œnecessaries of life,” the court con- cluded she was not at liberty to sell the chattels and effects of her husband even to obtain the necessaries.

Government policy with respect to marriage and divorce among Indian women was equally damaging. Customary marriages under Aboriginal law were considered valid, but customary divorces were not. Only legal divorces under the Divorce Act were recognized, making it next to impossible for Aboriginal women to divorce. Women and children were compromised because children could be denied support and other monetary benefits and second mar- riages could be declared null and void.

In addition to having less than equal rights in marriage, women had no political rights until well into the twentieth century. Voting rights, originally given to all property own- ers in 1736, were taken back from women in 1849. Clearly Louis-Joseph Papineau expressed the mentality of the era: ”œIt is revolting to see women dragged by their husbands, and daughters by their fathers, often against their will, to the hustings. Public interest, decency and the mod- esty of women demand that these scandals never reoccur.”

Women in Quebec did not re-gain the right to vote for 100 years, and it took more than 60 years for women outside Quebec to re-gain the vote.

Political participation rights were not secured until 1931 when women were acknowledged as ”œpersons” and could thus become members of the Senate of Canada and other federal bodies, as well as vie for public office.

After women succeeded in acquir- ing political rights and some limited protection of their rights within mar- riage, nothing of any consequence hap- pened to advance citizenship rights for women or Aboriginal peoples between 1930 and the 1970s except for the coming into force in 1947 of the Canadian Citizenship Act, which gave mar- ried women control over their own citizenship and conferred a common Canadian citizenship on all non-Aboriginal Canadians. Status Indians were excluded, as they did not acquire voting rights until 1960.

The introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 was the start of a golden age of women’s equality rights and the advent of constitutional recognition of the rights of Aboriginal peoples for the first time. By entrenching compre- hensive equality guarantees and treaty and Aboriginal rights, Parliament opened the door for possible full citizenship for both groups.

Activist women lawyers succeeded in litigating a foundation of legal prin- ciples in interpreting the Charter, which advanced women’s equality rights in both the public and private spheres. Some examples are the cases of Andrews’s v. The Law Society of British Columbia, which adopted an interpre- tation of equality rights that recog- nized different treatment is sometimes necessary to achieve equality; Morgen- taler v. The Queen, which recognized that state interference with a women’s decisions over her pregnancy violated her bodily security rights; Brooks v. Canada Safeway, which recognized that pregnancy discrimination was sex discrimination; and Moge v. Moge, which addressed the need for courts to understand the feminization of pover- ty through divorce.

Aboriginal activists similarly used the courts and the Charter to advance their economic, social and cultural rights and re-claim Indian status. Once the prohibition on hiring lawyers to lit- igate land claims was lifted in 1952, the courts increasingly became an integral part of the struggle for full citizenship. From 1970 to 2000, Aboriginal groups brought nearly 60 cases before the Supreme Court of Canada. Prior to that time, only 10 cases had been litigated in over 100 years. Their constitutional rights being guaranteed in the Charter also provided a springboard to negoti- ate land claims settlements and other Aboriginal and treaty rights.

Although significant progress has occurred over the past 25 years, women are still denied full access to equivalent income through equal wages, fair access to property and tax deductions that recognize women’s dual public and domestic responsibili- ties, and senior positions in public and private positions of power and influence. Aboriginal women are dou- bly disadvantaged with respect to matrimonial property rights, income levels, job opportunities, and protec- tion from violence. Reserve conditions have not changed and persistent inequality is pervasive in the funding allocations for basic needs for Indians compared with people with full Canadian citizenship.

The residential schools tragedy has finally been acknowledged as a massive human rights violation motivated by systemic racism and policies of assimi- lation. The official government apolo- gy offered by the Government of Canada to the Aboriginal citizens of Canada on June 11, 2008, and the unprecedented Settlement Agreement of November 2005, which provided for billions in compensation, as well as a the Truth and Reconciliation Commis- sion, are a clear and unequivocal affir- mation of the entitlement of Aboriginal citizens to full civil, politi- cal, economic, social and cultural rights within the Canadian identity.

The focus of seventeenth and eigh- teenth century citizenship in Canada was the acquisition of civil rights such as the freedom of speech and of movement; that of the nineteenth cen- t u ry was political rights such as voting and access to elected office; that of the twentieth century was economic, social and cultural rights, including health care, public education and pensions.

At first glance it would appear that this history speaks to a steady progres- sion and expansion of rights for Cana- dian citizens, making Canada an exemplary democratic state. But the reality of the history of citizenship in this country is best understood in the context of its marginalized citizens. Too often citizenship is discussed or measured by merely looking at social membership and political participa- tion through the lens of the franchise. This view gives a far too narrow and incomplete picture.

A more complete pic- ture requires examination of the extent to which cit- izens enjoy individual and collective rights. Structural barriers to the full enjoy- ment of rights must be identified, and if the state ignores or exacerbates the structural barriers, this must be rec- ognized as undermining the citizen- ship rights of those affected.

Even a cursory analysis reveals that women and Aboriginal Canadians have been denied full citizenship for a very long time. Both groups have con- sistently fought for their rights, with different degrees of success.

If we have learned anything from the past four centuries, it is the consisten- cy and determination of Aboriginal peo- ple to resist assimilation in spite of the most difficult and debilitating structural barriers. It is clear that prolonging post- colonial policies of assimilation will do nothing more than to ensure their per- petuation as ”œcitizens-minus.” The cen- turies have also taught us that until both groups get fair access to citizenship rights, persistent and extensive social and conomic inequality will continue to undermine their social integration and social solidarity, both of which are funda- mental measuring posts of citizenship.

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