Decolonizing Canadian citizenship: shared belonging, not shared identity

Abstract

Contemporary theories of decolonial citizenship struggle to have universal appeal. In the Canadian context, two types of theories dominate within the literature. On the one hand, there are theories that promote a shared identity. These appeal to the settler majority but often push Indigenous peoples away. On the other hand, theories that suggest that Indigenous peoples and settlers simply need to respect one another and get on with business in a more just way fail to offer convincing accounts of how this state of affairs will come into existence. In other words, such theories have little appeal for the more numerous and more powerful settler population upon whose success such proposals depend. This article considers two insufficient prominent expressions of the two perspectives by, respectively, Alan C. Cairns and Melissa S. Williams. In so doing, it is suggested that greater consideration for the psychological dimension of citizenship offers a better starting point for building a sense of common purpose and shared belonging between Indigenous and settler peoples, promoting a thinner mutual identification with shared Canadian institutions.