When tribalism meets liberalism: Human rights and Indigenous boundary problems in Canada

Abstract

This article draws on debates about the 'boundary problem' in democratic theory to consider the normative challenges raised by descent-based Aboriginal membership rules in Canada. The boundary paradox is one of the most intractable puzzles of democratic theory. If a demos is necessarily bounded, so that some people are excluded, what normative principle could justify these exclusions? Liberal theory tends to insist on the primacy of consent as the basis of political society and so fails to explain the reliance of liberal democracies on birthright membership, especially the distribution of citizenship to foreign-born descendants of citizens. Applied to expressly kinship-based polities like Ab..