Kymlicka, Liberalism, and Respect for Cultural Minorities

Author(s): John Tomasi

Source: Ethics, Vol. 105, No. 3 (Apr., 1995), pp. 580-603
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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ARTICLE

Kymlicka, Liberalism, and Respect

for Cultural Minorities*
John Tomasi
Do liberalism's foundational principles call for the recognition of
group rights to protect minority cultures? According to Will Kymlicka,
those principles do. Kymlicka has developed a novel and sophisticated
argument to show that, in conditions of cultural pluralism, the liberal
principle of equal respect for persons sometimes requires the recognition of collective rights for the protection of cultural groupings.' Because Kymlicka's argument for cultural rights appeals to widely held
liberal principles, his argument has strong intuitive appeal for liberals
and is already gaining influence among them.2 However, it is not clear
that Kymlicka's argument can bear close examination.
This article begins with an evaluation of Kymlicka's argument for
cultural rights. In Sections I and II, I shall argue that Kymlicka's
argument, while highly instructive about liberalism's foundational
commitments, cannot provide a justification for the cultural rights he
wants. By uncovering the motivational roots of Kymlicka's argument,
however, we will discover a different and more powerful justification
for a liberal recognition of special rights. Indeed, as we will see, much
of the intuitive appeal of Kymlicka's argument may come from his
own unrecognized reliance on this (different) pattern of justification.
This is surprising: for this stronger pattern ofjustification, the pattern
* For comments on earlier versions, I thank Bernard Williams, Jerry Cohen, Brian
Barry, Sam Freeman, Amy Gutmann, Tony Laden, George Rainbolt, Susan Okin, the
members of my Political Philosophy 171 class at Stanford (especially Mac Beal and
Stanley Kim), and the editors and readers at Ethics.
1. Kymlicka's most complete presentation of this argument is in Liberalism,Community and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). All page references are to
that work, unless otherwise indicated.
2. Allen Buchanan, for example, relies explicitly on Kymlicka's argument for some
of his most interesting and important arguments for a liberal recognition of secession
rights. See Secession (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991), pp. 39, 53-54, 79. I say more
about Buchanan's argument below at n. 31.
Ethics 105 (April 1995): 580-603
? 1995 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/95/0503-0006$01.00

580

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on which I say Kymlicka actually relies, does not itself rely on liberalism's foundational principles. In Section III, I'll say what this nonliberal pattern is and show why liberals should adopt it.
I. CULTURAL MEMBERSHIP AS A PRIMARY GOOD
Kymlicka says that in many modern nation-states there is an important
discontinuity between the scope of two different sorts of community:
political community and cultural community. The political community
is the grouping "within which individuals exercise the rights and responsibilities entailed by the framework of liberal justice." The cultural
community, by contrast, is the grouping "within which individuals
form and revise their aims and ambitions" (p. 135). People within the
same cultural community share a culture, a language and history;
these define their cultural membership. But in many modern nationstates these two types of community are not coextensive. For example,
in the United States, Canada, and Australia there are aboriginal groupings that are distinct from the main cultural groupings; similar situations obtain in Western European states with culturally distinct subgroupings, such as those in Belgium and Switzerland.
Kymlicka says the lack of coextensivity between the political and
cultural communities in many modern nation-states has an important
implication: it suggests two different ways by which individuals may
be incorporated into a liberal state. People may be incorporated universally, so that each person is taken to stand in the same direct relation
to the state. Or, they might be incorporated consociationally,so that
the nature of each person's rights varies with the particular cultural
community to which he belongs. For example, in Canada some aboriginal leaders have been able to enact laws that prohibit the selling (or
even the renting) of traditional aboriginal lands to outsiders: a Canadian citizen who is Inuit may buy (or rent) a piece of this land from
another Inuit, bat a Canadian who is white may not. Similar measures
have been adopted in Canada regarding language instruction in
schools and, especially, regarding certain political rights. In northern
Canada, for example, some aboriginal leaders have proposed imposing
long residency requirements on white Canadians (of up to ten years)
before they can vote on local matters. Kymlicka groups all such measures loosely under the heading "group rights" (pp. 138, 146-50).3
Significantly, as Kymlicka says, "the justification for these measures
focuses on their role in allowing minority cultures to develop their

3. This heading is troublesome, as Kymlicka notes (p. 139). Buchanan suggests

that such measures are not rights but legal authorizations to cancel certain immunities
from interference (pp. 39-40). Like Buchanan, however, I shall follow Kymlicka's
usage.

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distinct cultural life, an ability insufficiently protected by 'universal'

modes of incorporation" (p. 137).
A warning may be in order. Many liberal countries from their very
inception have recognized systems of exclusion, especially in political
matters, by which individuals gain an especially important role in
local matters. Under systems of democratic federalism, like that in the
United States, each citizen is politically incorporated both universally
and consociationally: all citizens have equal standing regarding constitutional and legislative matters on the national level; each citizen has
special standing regarding constitutional and legislative matters concerning his own locality, whether township, county, or state. Like the
restrictive measures Kymlicka means to justify, democratic federalist
the autonomy
measures-on their consociational dimension-protect
and
the
privileges of (fellow
of local groups by restricting
powers
national) outsiders.4 The project of showing the foundations of liberal
democratic federalism is a difficult and, I believe, a timely one.5 But
that project should not be confused with the project Kymlicka is undertaking here, which is to argue that liberalism itself sometimes calls for
as those that
a very extreme set of consociational measures-such
would allow local legislatures to restrict property sales between citizens
on the basis of race or cultural background. In the liberal context, the
distinction between arguing for federalism and arguing for cultural
rights is no little one. I shall return to it below.6

4. This partially explains why, for example, the traditional political culture of
Vermont can be so unlike that of its neighbor New Hampshire. (Can one imagine New
Hampshirites electing a Socialist to the U.S. House of Representatives?)
5. What's more, the project of giving foundations to liberal federalism seems prior,
both strategically and conceptually, to that of justifying the special cultural-protecting
measures Kymlicka discusses. That project is strategically prior since until we know
precisely what protection federalist measures can or cannot provide to cultural minorities, we have no clear reason to begin a search for specialized collectivist measures like
those Kymlicka insists are needed (no reason unless it is the mistaken belief that some
choice must be made between universal and consociational principles, simpliciter).The
project of finding foundations for federalism would also appear to be conceptually prior
since, for one thing, the principles of self-government that apply on the local level (which
a theory of federalism would supply) are themselves formulizable as universal principles.
6. Kymlicka, of course, never suggests that his argument is meant to provide a
foundation for liberal democratic federalism. (Indeed, in the index of Liberalism,Community and Culture the word "federalism" does not even appear.) But nor, I think unfortunately, does he make clear precisely how he sees his project as differing from that one.
The consociational measures he calls "group rights" seem to differ from the consociational measures associated with traditional democratic federalism in two ways. First, the
measures Kymlicka favors are to be applied to groups picked out by their distinctive
cultures (as defined in the main text below). Second and most important: unlike the
more familiar consociational measures, many of the group rights Kymlicka advocates
do not leave intact "the structure of rights guaranteed elsewhere in the constitution"
(p. 138). If he were advocating only consociational measures that were compatible with

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Liberalism typically is understood to be hostile to the idea of

allowing groups to claim for themselves collective measures of the sort
Kymlicka advocates.7 A liberalism that allowed groups to claim rights
that conflict with basic individual rights would appear to treat "respect
for groups" as more important than "respect for individuals." But
Kymlicka says that this way of thinking, however firmly entrenched in
liberal self-understanding, rests on a mistake. According to Kymlicka,
liberal theory can accommodate two kinds of respect for persons: respect for a person as a member of the political community and respect
for a person as a member of his particular cultural grouping (pp.
150-54). In conditions of cultural pluralism, according to Kymlicka,
the liberal commitment to respect for persons results in a liberal need
for the recognition of special consociational modes of incorporation,
in particular, those associated with cultural rights.8
Kymlicka's argument is in two main steps. First, Kymlicka claims
that cultural membership has a more important place in liberal theory
than is explicitly recognized by liberalism's leading contemporary proponents, such as John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. Although these
liberals have failed to recognize it, cultural membership is so important
that it is a primary good (p. 162). Second, Kymlicka claims that compared to members of the dominant cultural groupings, members of
minority cultures may be differentially disadvantaged with respect to
the good of cultural membership. Minority rights are needed to prevent or rectify this disadvantage (p. 162). Let's look more closely at
this argument.
Why, within the liberal framework, should cultural membership
be recognized as an important good? Liberals place great importance
those other constitutional rights, then Kymlicka's argument might well be taken merely
as being about federalism. (This because without a background account of federalism,
it remains an open question whether or not the picking out of a group by its culture
ipso factor disrupts the structure of constitutional rights.) So it is this second feature,
the limiting of other individual rights, that makes the measures Kymlicka is advocating
so difficult to justify within the liberal context (and thus makes Kymlicka's argument
so interesting).
7. As Kymlicka says, "The accepted wisdom is that liberals must oppose any proposals for self-government which would limit individual rights in the name of collective
rights" (p. 138).
8. Although Kymlicka does not discuss this, notice that conventional federalist
measures also would appear to rely on a distinction between these two kinds of respect.
The issue is made complex by the question of where state and province boundaries
should be drawn, and of how closely such lines should map onto lines separating cultural
groups (here, using "culture" in Kymlicka's sense). But what distinguishes the special
measures Kymlicka advocates from ordinary federalist measures is not that they
uniquely seek to recognize that second form of respect. Rather, what makes Kymlicka's
cultural rights distinct is that, unlike the more familiar consociational measures associated with democratic federalism, they seek to do so in a way that does not leave intact
the structure of rights generated by the first form of respect.

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on the idea of individual autonomy, on the idea that every individual

has an interest in effectively exercising his moral power of forming
and revising a plan of life. A precondition to exercising that moral
power, according to Rawls, is the idea of self-respect, "the sense that
one's life-plan is worth carrying out."9 Liberty is important to liberals
at least in part because liberty enables each individual actively to form
and revise his own life plan: self-confirmation gives people self-respect.10
But, Kymlicka asks, what is the source of people's beliefs about value,
the beliefs by which people confirm the value of their own choices?
Kymlicka argues that these beliefs are rooted in the structure of the
cultural communities in which people find themselves (p. 165). When
a person sets out to select a life plan, he does not start de novo but
instead selects from a range of options that is determined by his cultural heritage. Cultural narratives, stories of sorts of lives more or less
worth living, are passed down through cultural literature-written,
oral, and pictorial. The language and history of a person's cultural
grouping are the media through which each individual becomes aware
of the options available to him and of the relative values his group
assigns to those options. Cultural membership is crucial to self-respect
because it provides salience to the options from which a person selects
in making the judgments about how he can best live his life.
According to Kymlicka, the relationship between cultural membership and self-respect is so strong that parties in Rawls's original
position would have good reason to view cultural membership as a
primary good, a good people value irrespective of what particular life
plan each happens to choose. Kymlicka quotes Rawls, "the parties in
the original position would wish to avoid at almost any cost the social
conditions that undermine self-respect" (p. 166; Rawls, p. 440). The
loss of cultural membership would shrink the range of life options
available to a person and strip the remaining options of their salience.
This is a social condition Rawlsian parties strongly would wish to avoid.
Kymlicka concludes, "Rawls's own argument for the importance of
liberty as a primary good is also an argument for the importance of
cultural membership as a primary good" (p. 166).
It is crucial to understanding Kymlicka's argument to see that by
it the cultural structure, the cultural community, is being recognized
as a context of choice (p. 166). Cultural membership "is a good in its
capacity of providing meaningful options for us, and aiding our ability

9. Rawls, A TheoryofJustice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971),

p. 178.
10. This way of emphasizing the idea that liberty is important to liberals not only
because of its direct role in allowing people to make their own choices but especially
because it is a means to self-respect is one of Kymlicka's distinctive, and most important,
contributions to the recent debate.

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to judge for ourselves the value of our lifeplans" (p. 166). Kymlicka
says that the idea of culture as a context of choice is importantly
distinct from a different sense of culture, where that term is taken to
refer to the character of a historical community. On this latter view,
"changes in the norms, values, and their attendant institutions in one's
community (e.g. membership in churches, political parties, etc.) would
amount to loss of one's culture" (p. 166). But Kymlicka is using 'culture'
to refer not to the character of any community but to the community
as a context of choice, to the cultural structure itself. Taken this way, as
a context of choice, "the cultural community continues to exist even
when its members are free to modify the character of the culture, should
they find its traditional ways of life no longer worth while" (p. 167).
For example, Kymlicka describes the radical transformation of
French Canadian culture in the 1960s-the so-called Quiet Revolution-which saw the rapid decline of key social and religious institutions, such as the Roman Catholic Church. Even through this period
of extremely rapid change, during which people "began to make very
different choices than they traditionally had done," Kymlicka says "the
existence of a French-Canadian cultural community itself was never
in question, never threatened with unwanted extinction or assimilation
as aboriginal communities are currently threatened." Despite the radical changes in the character of the cultural community, there was no
danger to the cultural structure itself, "no danger to their ability to
examine the options that their cultural structure had made meaningful
to them" (p. 167). So what Kymlicka says is important is the cultural
structure itself rather than the character of the cultural community:
"It is the existence of a cultural community viewed as a context of choice
that is a primary good, and a legitimate concern of liberals" (p. 169).
But even if cultural membership is an imporant good, why does
liberalism sometimes require special rights to protect that good? According to the Rawlsian and Dworkinian conceptions of liberalism
within which Kymlicka situates his argument, the liberal view ofjustice
is founded on the idea that the interests of each member of the political
community matter, and matter equally (p. 182). Rawls and Dworkin
share the view that "the interests of each citizen are given equal consideration in two social institutions or procedures: an economic market
and a political process of majority government" (p. 183).11 But Kymlicka says with some groups, such as the aboriginal population of
11. Tony Laden has suggested to me that it is unclear whether Rawls is committed
to the view that a planned economy conflicts with "political liberalism" or that democracy
(which is central to political liberalism) is the same as "majority government." Strictly
speaking, Laden may well be right (which, in my view, is all the worse for Rawls's
claim to be a liberal). But Kymlicka's characterization is uncontroversial enough for the
argument at hand.

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Northern Canada, the consequences of these two institutions may be

dire: "the effect of market and political decisions made by the majority
may well be that aboriginal groups are outbid or outvoted on matters
crucial to their survival as a cultural community" (p. 183). By liberal
principles, individuals are taken to be responsible for differences that
arise because of their own choices. But differences that arise purely
as a result of people's circumstances are taken to be arbitrary from a
moral point of view. In deciding whether cultural groupings may claim
special protective rights for themselves, Kymlicka says, the question
the liberal must ask is whether the "request for special rights or resources is grounded in differential choices or in unequal circumstances" (p. 186).
Kymlicka argues that a comparison of the situations of individual
white, English-speaking Canadians with those of individual aboriginals
suggests that the differences between members of these two groups
is more a result of unequal circumstances than of different choices.
In bidding for resources with which to pursue their plans of life, white
people "are bidding solely on the basis of what is useful in pursuing
the goals that they have chosen to pursue, secure in the knowledge
that their context of choice is protected." But, Kymlicka says, for
aboriginals "it is necessary to outbid nonaboriginal people just to ensure that their cultural structure survives, leaving them few resources
to pursue the particular goals they've chosen from within that structure" (p. 189). This results in a situation of inequality wherein the
whites "get for free what aboriginal people have to pay for: secure
cultural membership" (p. 190).
Kymlicka says this inequality arises quite independently of the
choices people make and indeed arises before people even make their
choices. For example, Kymlicka says a two-year-old Inuit girl who as
yet has no projects faces this inequality. "Without special political
protection, like restrictions on the rights of transient workers, by the
time she is eighteen the existence of the cultural community in which
she grew up is likely to be undermined by the decisions of people
outside the community" (p. 189). This will happen no matter what
choices she makes, yet an English-Canadian boy will not face this
problem. Kymlicka says, "The rectification of this inequality is the
basis for a liberal defense of aboriginal rights, and of minority rights
in general" (p. 189). Special rights, far from being prohibited by the
liberal requirement that all citizens be treated equally, actually promote liberal equality.
II. A CONCEPTUAL FORK
The striking feature of Kymlicka's argument is that it employs an
individualistic justification-respect
for individuals as autonomous
choosers-as a basis for a defense of the collective notion of a cultural

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right. However, there is a fundamental problem with Kymlicka's attempt to use this strategy to argue for cultural rights in the liberal
context.
A symptom of the problem, and a telling marker of its depth, is
that Kymlicka is unclear about the nature of the primary good that is
the centerpiece of his argument. As his argument unfolds his description of that good undergoes a subtle, but marked, transformation.
Originally, the good associated with cultural membership is presented
simply as the good of there being a cultural structure, a context of
choice (pp. 162-66).- But later this concept is presented with an unannounced parenthetical modifier: the good is described as that of a
"(stable) context of choice" (p. 167). Still later, the parentheses drop
and the primary good is described as that of a "securecultural context,"
or "a secure cultural context of choice" (pp. 169 and 170; emphases
mine). By this stage, Kymlicka's crucial early distinction between the
cultural structure itself and the character of the culture (pp. 166-67)
is referred back to as a distinction between "the stabilityof a cultural
community" and its character (p. 169; emphasis mine). So in some
passages, especially ones later in Kymlicka's discussion, what is claimed
to be of value is not merely the existence of one's cultural community as
a context of choice but rather the stability of that community context.12
These are two different notions. In the end, it is unclear which Kymlicka means to be discussing.13 But on either interpretation Kymlicka's
argument seems unlikely to produce the conclusion he wants.
Let's assume that the good of cultural membership should be
taken as it is first described: what is centrally important is the existence
of a cultural community understood as a context of choice. Of course,
even on this existential interpretation it is not the existence of just
any cultural context that is said to be an important good for the
people in question. Rather, as Kymlicka says, because of the way each
individual person's identity becomes bound up with the cultural community in which he finds himself, it is the good associated with each
person's own particular cultural context that is at issue (pp. 173, 175).
What else do we know about this good? Recall that Kymlicka made his
crucial distinction between the character of a culture and the cultural
12. Prior to the parenthetical introduction of the word "stable" (on p. 167), I find
only one instance where the primary good in question is referred to as being a "secure"
structure, and this only in passing (p. 165). All other references to that good treat that
good existentially. But after that parenthetical passage, it is the stability of that structure
rather than its existence that seems to be Kymlicka's main concern.
13. It might be thought that there is an intermediate interpretation, whereby the
structure only exists when it is stable. Although Kymlicka never says that is what he
means, such an interpretation is at least compatible with what he says. But in any
case such an interpretation would be a species of the stability interpretation, which I
analyze below.

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structure as a context of choice by saying that in the character sense,

changes in a cultural community's "norms, values, and their attendant
institutions" would result in a loss of culture (p. 166). This means
that the cultural structure as a context of choice (existential sense) is
something that persists even when such fundamental changes occur.
But if the culture's structure is to be distinguished from its character
as something that even these very basic changes cannot affect, then
this raises the question whether any change in a society-short of a
terrible natural catastrophe or war, perhaps-could
result in there
being a loss of structure from the perspective of individual human
lives.
At one point, Kymlicka describes the case of an Indonesian tribe
where the sudden introduction of television led a large group of children to jump off a cliff to their deaths, tragically imitating what they
had viewed (p. 170). But the more typical case seems to be that of the
Inuit girl Kymlicka describes, who from age two to eighteen experienced the rapid and disorienting transition of her culture from Inuit
to white ways. Because the character of her society was in transition,
it is true that this girl was unable to make her life choices from within
a (stable) Inuit cultural context. She grew up in a society that was,
transitionally, bilingual and bicultural (and jarringly so). But it would
be strange indeed to say that she, as an individual, therefore made her
choices within no cultural structure. Of course she did: she made her
choices not as an Inuit and not as a white but, precisely, as a member
of an Inuit group in the midst of a disorienting transition to white
society."4 The beliefs about value that come from that transition
group-however
unstable those beliefs may be as a set-are very
much beliefs that come from a structure that was hers: it is in that
transitional community that she was raised. About this Inuit girl, Kymlicka says "the existenceof the cultural community in which she grew
up is likely to be undermined" (p. 189; emphasis mine).15 But the
cultural community in which she grew up is the cultural community
in which she grew up; it is not the more purely Inuit cultural community in which she would have grown up had she (somehow) lived her
life before she was two (or lived it all of a sudden when she was just
two).16 For her, a cultural context existed and that context, however
unstable, was a context that was hers.

14. The point is the same if one thinks of her group not as in transition but as
caught between Inuit and white ways.
15. It is important to Kymlicka's argument, though not to the point I am making
here, that her group is said to be undermined "by the decisions of people outside the
community" (p. 189)-on which, see below.
16. The muddle arises, I believe, because Kymlicka employs a synchronic mode of
evaluation where, given his individualistic perspective, a diachronic one is required. There

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The bare existence of a cultural context that is one's own need

not necessarily be much help when it comes to the securing of selfrespect: as with the Inuit girl perhaps, a person's own cultural context
may be so unstable that it is inadequate to help her affirm for herself
the worth of her choices. So it cannot be the mere existence of a
cultural structure that is one's own that Kymlicka really has in mind
when he speaks of cultural membership as a primary good. There is
also a structural reason for rejecting this interpretation. For if the
good of cultural membership as a context of choice is taken in this
existential sense, Kymlicka's argument does not generate the special
rights he wants. If it is the mere existence of "one's own" cultural
structure that is the good, then each individual person (except perhaps
the dead Indonesians) has that good, and each has it equally. 17 Taken
existentially, cultural membership is a primary good only in the same
uninteresting sense as is, say, oxygen: since (practically) no one is
differentially advantaged with respect to that good, it generates no
special rights.
So we must take seriously the arrival of the modifier "stable"
within Kymlicka's argument: the primary good in question is not
merely an existing cultural choosing context but a stable cultural context (such as the Inuit girl in her transitional society presumably
lacked). What does it mean for a cultural choosing context to be stable?
Kymlicka never directly tells us, but we can work it out. A cultural
community as a context of choice has two aspects: it sets out options
of life choices, and it assigns values to those options relative to one
another. Let's say that such a context is unstable in periods when new
options suddenly and unpredictably appear among the life-choice possibilities while important old options disappear. Simultaneously, and
possibly as a result, the traditional rankings of the various options
become unsettled-this is because those rankings become a matter of
disagreement, or real uncertainty, within the community. Further, the
character of these new options and the disordering of the rankings are
profound and pervasive enough to reach to the very foundations of the
cultural community: they threaten not merely the cultural community's
values, norms, and attendant institutions (the "character"of the culture)

may be a time-slice perspective from which the character of the cultural context may
be said to have changed to something completely different. But from the perspective
of individual human lives in progress (which is -the relevant perspective here), the
existence of the structure is untouched.
17. Kymlicka says Rawls and Dworkin do not discuss cultural membership as a
primary good because they falsely assume cultural homogeneity, that the political and
cultural communities will be coextensive (pp. 137, 166, and esp. 177-78). But on
the existential interpretation, Kymlicka's argument cannot show the significance of
this omission.

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but the history, language, and culture of the group (the "cultural structure" itself). On this second interpretation of Kymlicka'sargument-the
stability interpretation-the primary good in question is a situation
where cultural instability of this sort is avoided. Kymlicka's position is
that special group rights are justified when people find themselves in
disadvantaged circumstances with respect to this good, so described.
Two preliminary points about the stability interpretation. First,
if the promotion of self-respect is the basic issue then there are some
other factors regarding self-respect that should be put on the balance
when considering whether special rights are justified. Recall that what
is at base important about cultural membership is that it supplies
beliefs about value by which individual members of the political community can reaffirm for themselves the worth of the life plans they
choose. Now, members of transitional societies, especially contemporary aboriginal ones such as those in North America, usually are
aware-and acutely-that
they are membersof transitional societies.18
That realization is often woven prominently into the cultural selfunderstanding the members of such communities share."9 This has
an important consequence: in a difficult cultural-transition choosing
context a community's criteria determining what counts as a respectable choice of a life plan may be much more flexible than they would
be in a community that is highly stable. Since individuals living through
such difficult times can be aware of this difference, they can as individuals respect the worth of their own choices in part becausethey recognize the special difficulty of their choices. This is not to say that individual members of unstable cultural communities (Inuits or Quebecois,
perhaps) face no particular threats to their sense of their self-worth.
They do. But self-respect is an extremely complex psychological phenomenon and Kymlicka's argument underestimates the myriad ways
the psychological state associated with that phenomenon can be got
to and secured.20 In fact, Kymlicka's argument does this not only by
failing to consider important ways individual members of transitional
groups are able to secure self-respect for themselves but also by failing
to recogize the cost in terms of self-respectlevied by the very remedies
he proposes. If an individual makes an important life choice-say, to
18. I am not suggesting that all aboriginal groups in transitional states have
achieved this sort of self-awareness. But if those who have not tend to suffer worse,
the factors I discuss below may help explain why.
19. This is especially apparent in the self-descriptive literature of North American
Indians. To take just one example, see Louise Erdrich, Tracks (New York: Henry
Holt, 1988).
20. As Chandran Kukathas has suggested to me, the problem of how people actually acquire self-respect is made even more complex by the fact that subgroups within
communities may react differently to conditions of dislocation. For example, children
may be more able than adults to find order and meaning in a transitional state.

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sell his land to a (wealthy) white person and raise his family in a city
near a major university-but is told that he is forbidden to do so by
law, then that person's self-respect, the respect he has for the value
of the choices he makes about how he wants to lead his life (and the
personal hopes he has for his children's lives), may receive a direct
and heavy blow. In many cases, the imposition of group rights does
not come without a price; part of that price looks likely to demand
payment in terms of self-respect.21
A second preliminary point also concerns a doubt one might have
about the importance of a stable cultural choosing context, and this
is a doubt that one might especially expect to find among the very
people to whom Kymlicka addresses his discussion: liberals. For liberalism, a doctrine that historically defined itself against the conservativism of the ancien regime, has a deep motivational connection with another important notion: a belief in the possibility of social progress,
especially as a result of personal experimentation.22 In many contexts,
a certain degree of cultural instability-including
an instability that
affects the deep sources of people's beliefs about value-not only goes
along with but is a precondition of social progress of that sort. This
belief in the possibility of progress achieved through individual experimentation, an idea prominent in the work John Stuart Mill, may be
as entwined with liberalism as is the ideal of self-respect. If Kymlicka's
argument is meant for liberals, we might hope it to advance both these
liberal concerns instead ofjust one at the direct expense of the other.23
But this leads to our main point about the stability interpretation of
Kymlicka's argument.
Recall that Kymlicka introduced the primary good associated with
cultural membership as being the existence of a cultural structure as
a context of choice. But if we are to interpret the primary good of
cultural membership as referring to the stabilityof the cultural structure as a context of choice, then the distinction that must be examined
is that between the stability of the cultural community as a choosing
context and the character of that cultural community. To maintain
this (different) distinction, Kymlicka must show that changes in the
latter are not ipso facto changes in the former. And he must show
21. I do not say that these factors alone defeat Kymlicka's conclusion about the
desirability of cultural rights. But they militate against such rights, and they do so in
the name of self-respect.
22. The liberal belief in the possibility of progress should not be confused with
deterministic, historicist (nonliberal) variants. For a lucid discussion of this distinction
in the context of J. S. Mill's work, see Alan Ryan, J. S. Mill (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. 47, 196-99.
23. It is true that Kymlicka is concerned with social progress in a broader sense,
since he speaks of the importance of "liberalizing" nonliberal communities (p. 170).
But that concern is different from the Millian one I am discussing in the immediate text.

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this with respect to people's respect-securing beliefs about value, beliefs which appear to be bound up with both sides of the distinction.
What tools are available to Kymlicka for making this distinction?
The structure of the cultural community refers to the culture
itself, a concept Kymlicka defines in terms of a "language, history and
culture."24 So threats to the structure of a culture must be threats
to the group's language, history, and culture. (If changes in these
characteristics are not acknowledged as changes in the structure, then
the notion of the structure is being used in the existential sense we
rejected above.) But Kymlicka also wants to say that in some cases,
such as the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, the structure of a community
can be unchanged even when the character of the community is
changed. Changes in the character of the community, on Kymlicka's
account, are changes in the community's "norms, values, and attendant
institutions." Thus to maintain his distinction between the primary
good of structure (stability sense) and the mere character of the community, Kymlicka must say that changes in a group's beliefs, values,
and institutions need not be changes-with respect to people's beliefs
about value-in the group's history, language, and culture.
This is implausible. The changes wrought in French Canada durchanges-in the
ing the Quiet Revolution were changes-important
history of the Quebecois cultural community. What's more, those
changes-for example, the sudden decline of Catholicism-had their
historic importance as changes in Quebecois culture. So perhaps Kymlicka means to rest his entire distinction between changes in character
and changes in structure on the stability of the community's language.
If so, this criterion would face a variety of difficulties,25 perhaps the
most serious of which are functional. Recall that what the cultural
structure as a context of choice is meant to do is transmit to people a
set of life-choice options and some beliefs about value related to those
options. But even when, as a taxonomical matter, a language does not
itself change, the set of options it transmits-along with the substantive evaluations it provides of those options-can change, can change
easily, and can change in profound ways: even in Inuit people can
discuss leaving the tribal system and setting off on a very new course
of life.26 As Kymlicka describes them, changes in a culture's character
24. This definition is muddy, but we must do our best with it. Kymlicka says,
"Language and history ... are the media through which a person becomes aware of
the options and of the relative values of these options" (p. 165). Since "culture" is
defined in terms of a group's language, history, and culture (p. 135), the beliefs about
value -in coming from the "structure itself" -come from the culture itself.
25. Language is a notoriously difficult concept to use for demarcating cultural
groups. For a helpful discussion, see Buchanan, p. 49.
26. It is true that this sometimes might require adding some non-Inuit words to
their language-for
example, "university degree" or "satellite dish."

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are changes in its structure as a context of choice. Because both describe cultural features associated with the generation of respect-securing beliefs about value, the criteria picking out the one overlap with
the criteria picking out the other. On the stability interpretation, Kymlicka's discussion allows no principled distinction between changes in
a cultural community's character and changes in that culture's structure as a context of choice.27
Why was this distinction so crucial? The distinction was crucial
because the role of the primary good associated with cultural membership was to show that people who find themselves unequally situated
with respect to that good merit special rights. But the distinction between changes in character and changes in structure (stability sense)
cannot help us identify which changes impermissibly damage people's
self-respect and which do not. To make that identification we must go
to the underlying value on which self-respect more immediately relies.
That is, Kymlicka's argument tells us to avoid differential degrees of
instability in the range of life options and the beliefs about the relative
values of those options that arise in different communities. To avoid
differential instabilities of that kind, one would need to allow cultural
groups (or their political majorities, dominant factions, or their leadership) to invoke whatever measures are required to prevent transition
periods in those communities, including transitions in what Kymlicka
calls the "character" of the community. On the stability interpretation,
Kymlicka's argument has the unwanted, conservative result that valid
claims to group rights spring up whenever the characterof a community is threatened with change.28
In places, Kymlicka hints that he is employing an additional criterion for picking out cultural changes that are objectionable: they are
unwanted by the group (pp. 145, 167). Kymlicka never makes clear
what formal role, if any, he wants this concern to play in his primary
goods argument.29 Thus, for example, he never tells us how, from
his individualist perspective, "changes the group wants" are to be
distinguished from "changes the group does not want." There are a

27. At one place, Kymlicka suggests a different dimension on which the structure/
character distinction might be maintained: one is "the context of people's choices," the
other "the product of people's choices" (p. 178). But since the context of choice is itself
a product of choice (made within a context), this is unhelpful.
28. This result is unwanted because it would deny individuals any genuine chance
to reaffirm for themselves the worth of their own -choices, which is what motivated the
discussion in the first place.
29. Perhaps he could admit that, on the stability interpretation, his distinction
between character and structure collapses but then contend that his argument only
generates special rights when changes in the character of the culture are "unwanted
Kymlicka does not proby the group." A conjunctive criterion of this sort-which
face a variety of difficulties.
pose-would

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variety of ways one might propose to make that distinction, but each
has different argumentative consequences. Since Kymlicka does not
tell us which he has in mind, we can neither evaluate the objectionableness of such changes from the perspective of individual self-respect
nor, more basically, can we evaluate whether that objectionableness
requires the particular form of consociational redress Kymlicka wants:
group rights.30 Still, the concern that certain groups face cultural
changes that are (in some sense) unwanted seems to have great importance to Kymlicka's project. That importance, I suspect, is not formal
but motivational. We shall return to this in Section III.
Kymlicka is unclear about the nature of the primary good associated with cultural membership. If we take that good as it is first described, in its existential sense, then at the end of his argument consideration of it yields nothing: no individual member of any cultural
community is disadvantaged with respect to that good, so no justicebased intervention is justified by the liberal commitment to treat citizens with equal respect. If we take that good as it is later described,
in its "stability" sense, then a crucial early distinction collapses and the
argument generates a plethora of conservative rights. Either the good
is so abstract and distant that no one is differentially disadvantaged
with respect to it, or it is so closely tied to the character of the community that multicultural societies are pervaded by inequalities with respect to it. And because the deepest guiding concern throughout Kymlicka's discussion is the access of individual people to respect-securing
beliefs about value, the strategic hope on which Kymlicka's argument
relies-to fix on some supposedly intermediate concept-is one that
is in principle misplaced. Kymlicka has not shown that liberalism's
fundamental principles require a recognition of cultural rights.
There is no obvious way to restructure Kymlicka's argument so
as to surmount this conceptual problem. The only possibility in sight
would be to try to work out some further distinction within what is
for Kymlicka a bedrock notion-the
notion of people's beliefs about
value-with an eye to showing that some kinds of beliefs about value
are more tied up with people's self-respect than are others (and thus,
by the self-respect test, that some cultural changes could be allowed
30. There are other ways to empower groups against unwanted cultural changes:
for example, various democratic federalist measures-which
are compatible with the
traditional universalist mode of incorporation-might
be worked out in a way that
would give groups greater self-determination while limiting individual liberty less than
would group rights. However, for certain groups-in
particular, for some groups of
aboriginals- Kymlicka thinks stronger (more collectivist) measures are appropriate.
Why? That question, I suspect, raises a deeper one: Is Kymlicka's concern to protect
cultural groups always really derivative from a concern to provide individual members
of such groups with the conditions of liberal self-respect? The answer is not obviously
"yes" (see Sec. III).

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while others were forbidden). But this would be delicate work at very
best: I doubt whether any such further distinction could be worked
out in the appropriate way, at least not within a framework that is
recognizably liberal.3"
III. BEYOND LIBERAL RESPECT
If the majority (or leadership) of a cultural group wishes to be allowed
to adopt special collective measures that would conflict with the liberal
rights of both member and nonmember citizens, those measures cannot be justified by liberalism's foundational principles in the way Kymlicka had hoped. But to repeat a warning made earlier, Kymlicka's
project regarding cultural rights must be marked off from a different,
much broader project that also concerns liberalism's resources for
protecting cultural and regional subgroupings of citizens: the project
of justifying (and plumbing the consociational limits of) liberal democratic federalism. Consociational measures that do leave intact the
structure of individual rights -measures like those granting a substantial degree of sovereignty to state legislatures in the United States-are
justified by liberal democratic federalism itself. The limit on that degree
of sovereignty is set by the content of those individual rights (typically,
as specified by the national constitution).32 Even if an adequate account
of how systems of federalism relate to liberalism's foundational principles has yet to be given, we have no reason to fear that the notion of
liberal federalism itself stands or falls with an argument about the very
specialized consociational measures Kymlicka calls cultural rights.33

31. The flagship argument of Allen Buchanan's Secessionis that liberalism's foundational principles sometimes require the recognition of a group right of political secession
on grounds of cultural preservation. But Buchanan's main argument for that claim
relies directly and explicitly on Kymlicka's group-rights argument (n. 2 above). So if
my analysis of Kymlicka's argument is correct, Buchanan's most interesting secession
argument would appear to go down with it. (It is true that Buchanan supplements
Kymlicka's account with the claim that, for most people at least, participation in community is not only a precondition but also a part of the good life [thus the good of cultural
membership has more than structural value for people]. But this is an odd justificatory
supplement to an individualistic strategy such as Kymlicka's: Buchanan never makes
clear how [or why] he thinks an observation about what counts as part of the good life
for most people could translate directly into an argument about liberal justice -and
an individual-liberty-limiting one at that.) For a very different way of thinking about
culture-based secession within the scope of liberal theory, see my "Secession, Group
Rights and the Grounds of Political Obligation," Humane StudiesReview 8 (1992): 3-18.
32. The limit on that degree of sovereignty is itself set by the content of those
individual rights (typically, as specified by the national constitution).
33. Let me emphasize: my analysis leaves untouched the question of whether a
self-respect-based argument like Kymlicka's could be developed in a way that might
justify, and elucidate, the principles of liberal democratic federalism. I believe there are
some intriguing possibilities in that direction.

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But what about cultural rights? Even if, as I have argued, Kymlicka has not identified a convincing liberal theory of minority rights
that does not mean that liberal societies cannot justifiably permit certain minority cultures to claim, special protective measures for themselves even when those measures would conflict with the liberal individual rights of both member and nonmember citizens. I believe we
are now in position to make out at least the beginnings of a different,
more plausible form of justification for a liberal recognition of whatKymlicka calls "cultural rights." Indeed, a strong strand of this different form ofjustification-ajustification
which does not appeal directly
to liberalism's fundamental principles-appears to run unrecognized
through Kymlicka's own account.
Kymlicka often suggests that his argument about the liberal commitment to group rights for cultural minorities is meant to apply to
a great variety of cultural groups throughout the liberal world (pp. 3,
135, 170, 178, 257-58).34 The three features he offers for picking
out such groups-a distinctive culture, language, and history-might
also lead one to think the pro-group-rights argument could apply
widely. It is striking, therefore, that when discussing particular cases
where his argument applies Kymlicka returns again and again to one
particular type of cultural community: aboriginal peoples (particularly
Inuit and North American Indians).
About Canadian Indians, Kymlicka says that they strongly prefer
to keep their culture separate from that of the non-Indian community.
Despite the Indians' preferences, Kymlicka tells us, the preservation
of Indian culture could not be "the natural result of the interplay of
preferences in the market." He says, "On the contrary, the viability
of Indian communities depends on coercively restricting the mobility,
residence, and political rights of both Indians and non-Indians" (p.
146). He says, "Historically, the evidence is that when the land on
which aboriginal communities are based became desirable for white
settlement and development, the only thing which prevented the undesired disintegration of the community was legally entrenched nonalienability of land" (p. 147). But if Indians genuinely do not wish to
trade their property for access to white culture, why do such exchanges occur?
Kymlicka does not give the answer one might expect. That is, he
does not describe the Indians as facing a public goods problem regarding their culture: they all would wish the traditional culture to be
preserved, but each of them would have reason to act in ways that,
when generalized, would result in the culture's being lost. Instead,

34. See also Kymlicka, "The Rights of Minority Cultures: Reply to Kukathas,"
Political Theory20 (1992): 140-46, pp. 140, 145.

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Kymlicka says these sales occurred "partly because [1] Indians were
financially deprived (and hence in need of money to meet the basic
needs of the family), and also because [2] they were culturally illequippedto understand the consequences of having (or selling) title to
land" (pp. 147-48; emphasis and bracketed numbers mine).
If the Indians' preference to preserve their separate culture could
be preserved by the market (as framed by traditional liberal institutions
and within the structures of democratic federalism), then there would
be no need for special rights for them. So we can discover the motivational roots of Kymlicka's discussion by learning precisely why he
thinks these existing arrangements fail. Feature (1), the lack of resources to meet basic needs of the family, is surely important to understanding the conditions of Indians but nonetheless is unhelpful in this
regard: such conditions require redress by universalist principles of
liberal justice (at least on the modern welfare liberalism Kymlicka
espouses).35 So the weight of the explanation of why Kymlicka thinks
consociational measures are needed must fall more on feature (2).
Notice, however, that there is also a perspective within universalist
liberalism from which the problem at feature (2) merits -edress.36
What does it mean for aboriginals to be "culturally ill-equipped" regarding the selling or keeping of their land? Presumably, it means the
aboriginals did not fully appreciate what they were doing when they
signed agreements that alienated their holdings in unwanted ways.
Perhaps this happened because they lacked basic reading or analytical
skills (to weigh long-run costs and benefits), or a grasp of the legal
authority of contract, or even an awareness that their citizenship ensures them standing before courts of law if aggrieved. On this interpretation of feature (2), "culturally ill-equipped" means "educationally
ill-equipped." But the liberal framework within which Kymlicka operates also sees the provision of basic education as a matter of individual
right. That liberalism requires that children of citizens are provided
with analytical and verbal training. More, each of those children is to
be trained to think of herself as a full member of liberal society (and
is even to be encouraged to learn the particular set of political virtues
attendant with liberal membership).37 So there is a liberal perspec35. There are also standing liberal principles which might justify claims for compensatory justice for many groups of Native Americans-such recompense, if secured,
would also address the problem at feature (1).
36. "Universalist liberalism," as I understand that term, is characterized not by a
refusal to recognize consociational modes of incorporation but, rather, by the insistence
that all legitimate consociational measures be limited by a distinctive core set of individual rights retained by every citizen, regardless of cultural or geographic community.
37. As Rawls says, political liberalism "will ask that children's education include
such things as knowledge of their constitutional and civic rights." Moreover, he says
the education of children in liberal society "should also encourage the political virtues

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tive-call it the "universalist perspective"-from which what is called

for in the case of the aboriginals is the proper instantiation of existing
principles, rather than the construction of specialized consociational
alternatives.38 On Kymlicka's own description of the plight of aboriginals, universalist principles would justify measures aimed at remedying both features (1) and (2), and those remedies are justified by a
concern to provide individuals with liberal self-respect.39 Kymlicka
must realize this. So what is it about his concern for the aboriginals
that causes him to abandon this universalist perspective in their case?
Throughout his discussion, Kymlicka speaks as though his concern to protect culture is wholly derivative from a concern to protect
particular, the sort of self-respect a person might
self-respect-in
gain through his autonomous selection of his own life plan. However,
regarding the preservation of aboriginal cultures, there is a different
way to understand his concern. Consider a different interpretation of
feature (2). Perhaps feature (2) suggests, what is unsurprising, that
individual members of at least some traditional aboriginal societies
tend not to think of themselves (and do not care to think of themselves)
as holders of the same set of individual rights that figure prominently
in liberal societies.40 Members of such societies may think of themselves
as holders of certain basic rights: for example, a right not to be enslaved
or bodily harmed, or a right not to have one's personal property
forcibly taken by others.4' Yet while recognizing those basic rights,

so that they want to honor the fair terms of social cooperation in their relations with
the rest of society" (Rawls, "The Priority of the Right and Ideas of the Good," Philosophy
and Public Affairs 17 [1988]: 251-76, 267). These are weighty requirements and they
set a limit to how completely any subgroup in a liberal society can insulate itself from
the requirements of liberal citizenship. Two excellent studies on this are Stephen
Macedo, LiberalVirtues(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); and William Galston,
Liberal Purposes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). I suggest a different
approach in "Individual Rights and Community Virtues," Ethics 101 (1991): 521-36,
and in my review of Macedo in Ethics 102 (1992): 397-99.
38. If the concern is to secure their self-respect, from this perspective, the remedy
is to secure their rights to welfare and education -perhaps supplemented by democratic
federalist measures compatible with their individual rights.
39. I am indebted to Amy Gutmann for discussion of these educational issues.
40. In the passage I quoted, Kymlicka suggests only that certain aboriginal cultures
ill-equip their members to understand themselves as holding rights to property in land.
I am generalizing from his account when I suggest that members of such societies may
not think of themselves as holders of other liberal rights, such as that to equal liberty
of conscience.
41. In North America, many aboriginal groups developed their own forms of
social control and evaluation which-while quite unlike the more formal Anglo-Saxon
the effect of recognizing basic rights such as these. A
concepts of procedure-had
study that brings this out nicely in the Inuit context is Harold Finkler, Inuit and the
Administration of Criminal Justice in the Northwest Territories:The Case of Forbisher Bay
(Ottawa: Ministry of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1976). Of course, I am not suggesting
that all aboriginal groups always respected basic human rights, or that the historical

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their society might be organized in ways that would lead members to

reject certain distinctively liberal freedoms, such as an expansive right
to free speech or a right to equal liberty of conscience in religious
matters (or even the right to sell property to people outside one's
racial or cultural group).
The legal history of Indian groups in the United States suggests
just this sort of distinction. Vine Deloria, Jr., argues that beginning
with the seminal 1883 case of Ex Parte Crow Dog (109 U.S. 556) the
trend of U.S. federal policy has been to force Indian tribes to treat
their members as holders of an ever greater range of distinctively
liberal rights, even when doing so would contradict-and erode-the
Indians' own traditions. This trend reached its culmination upon the
passage of the Civil Rights Bill in 1968, which made Indian customs
almost completely subservient to the Bill of Rights. Among the new
liberal freedoms that Deloria picks out as most destructive to the traditional Indian lifestyle was the right to religious freedom.42
As Rawls has emphasized in his recent work, when a society recognizes basic human rights and when its rejection of the further distinctively liberal freedoms is met by the widespread approval of members
of that group, then that society, while not itself liberal, may well merit
the respect of liberal societies.43 So perhaps, from the liberal perspective, certain liberal freedoms that are alien to aboriginal cultures are
best thought of not as lacking from those cultures but as irrelevant to
them. On this interpretation of feature (2), "culturally ill-equipped"
is not strictly reducible to "educationally ill-equipped" (especially since,
as we have seen, liberal principles require that children be educated
to think of themselves as holders of liberal rights-a self-understandig
that may be in considerable tension with that propagaged by the nonliberal traditions of the group).44 Perhaps Kymlicka advocates special

record of aboriginal peoples is cleaner in this regard than that of the European settlers.
For one fascinating counterexample, see Michael Roethler, "Negro Slavery among the
Cherokee Indians, 1540-1866" (Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1964).
42. See Vine Deloria, Jr., ed., Of UtmostGoodFaith (San Francisco: Straight Arrow
Books, 1971), pp. 85-125.
43. Rawls argues that while any society that is worthy of respect must honor basic
human rights such a society is not ipso facto a liberal society; see his "The Law of
Peoples" (Harvard University, Department of Philosophy, 1992). Further, Rawls says,
"Just as a citizen in a liberal society is to respect other persons' comprehensive religious,
philosophical and moral doctrines provided they are pursued in accordance with a
reasonable political conception of justice, so a liberal society is to respect other societies
organized by comprehensive doctrines, provided their political and social institutions
meet certain conditions that lead the society to adhere to a reasonable law of peoples"
("The Law of Peoples," p. 2).
44. If it is true that some aboriginal groupings are culturally ill-equipped (in this
sense) to understand the authority and responsibility of having liberal rights, the cultures
of such groupings seem distinct indeed from the liberal individualist culture as Kymlicka
describes it: "Liberal individualism is ... an insistence on respect for each individual's

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cultural rights not because he thinks measures to redress inequalities

regarding features (1) and (2) are notjustified by universalist principles
of liberalism (they plainly are). Rather, perhaps Kymlicka recognizes
the inappropriateness of exposing aboriginal groups to the measures
that would be required if we were to insist on treating them as full
citizens of liberal society. These measures would be inappropriate
because they would themselves result in the liberalization of those
groups against their own wishes. Imposing such measures, on this
view, would be an act of hubris: it would be a failure to recognize that
some cultures that are importantly unlike ours may yet be worthy of
our respect.
Whether this is really what motivates Kymlicka is not the important issue. But we must consider whether we might now have
before us the germ of an idea that could generate an alternative pattern of justification for cultural rights for aboriginal societies: some
aboriginal communities, accidents of geography to the contrary, are
importantly outside of liberalism.45I would hope that no one would
be surprised to find that the social and political understandings that
emerged in certain tribal, subsistence-hunting, animist societies in
North America might be dramatically unlike the understandings promoted by liberalism-a doctrine that emerged in the context of Christian religious battles between European nation-states. But to demonstrate that this suggestion could provide a justification for a liberal
recognition of special protective measures for aboriginal groups today
would require taking on a whole list of difficult questions. Let me just
make a beginning by sketching answers to three questions that would
arise immediately.
First, what does it mean for aboriginals to be "outside of liberalism" and why might we think that they are? The answer is tied up
with the problem of deciding what to make of a cultural group that
would repeatedly and insistently demand that they be allowed to invoke
protective measures that would conflict with basic liberal rights of both
member and nonmember citizens. Kymlicka rightly emphasizes the
measures such as these would serve to protect aboriginal groups from
liberal society. But they do more than protect them. These measures
or, more precisely, the very demand for them also helps define these
groups in terms of their relation to liberal society. A call for special
rights defines a cultural group, first, by revealing what view that group
takes of fellow national outsiders. For example, a group like the aboriginal one in northern Canada that would require newly arrived fellow

capacity to understand and evaluate her own actions, to make judgements about the
value of the communal and cultural circumstances she finds herself in" (p. 254).
45. I use "accident" in the conceptual (not historical) sense.

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citizens to meet a residency requirement of up to ten years before

being accorded (limited) voting privileges in local affairs would thereby
reveal itself to view people in the wider Canadian society more as
aliens than as as fellow citizens. Further, and this is the crucial point,
the call for collective measures defines the group in terms of what
authority it thinks the majority or leadership of the group has to
evaluate and reject even the most basic elements of the life plans
chosen by its own individual members. Liberal societies (in their theoretical commitments, at least) are distinctive in the great degree of
freedom they accord to individual members regarding their life choices
and in the great restaint it imposes on groups in society that would
claim for themselves evaluative powers over the choices of individual
members. A group in which a strong majority insists on the appropriateness for them of these sorts of liberty-limiting measures (such as
that forbidding a married couple from selling their ancestral land to
a white person in order to begin a new life for their family in a city)
seems thereby to be insisting on being recognized as a nonliberal
group.
If an account of certain aboriginal groups being outside of liberalism could be worked out along these lines, there would arise a second
question: If aboriginal groups are outside of liberalism, what does that
say about what measures are appropriate for their treatment? We can
distinguish two broad senses in which an aboriginal group can be
outside of liberalism-one strong, one weak-and a different pattern
of treatment is suggested by each. One might view certain aboriginal
groups as being outside of liberalism in the strongsense, whereby while
the traditions of that group recognize basic human rights, they nonetheless comprehensively reject other distinctively liberal rights;46 further, and perhaps as a consequence, that group expresses a desire to
separate itself utterly from the wider liberal society.47 On this view,
one might think societies such as Canada or the United States should
allow aboriginal groups actually to secede.48 If a right to secession

46. On this strong reading, feature (2) is taken to suggest that the relation of the
scope of the aboriginal cultural community and that of the liberal political community
is not merely that one is a subset of the other; rather, the sets share no members at all.
47. Aboriginal groups have sometimes spoken this way. Leaders of American Indians who made the Longest Walk summarized a long list of grievances with the question,
"How do we convince the U.S. government to simply leave us alone to live according
to our ways of life?" CongressionalRecord,July 27, 1978, H7458.
48. Secession, unlike migration, involves a claim to territory. Because many aboriginal groups were forced off land that was theirs and compelled to resettle on less desirable
land, the question of what territory aboriginals should (or could) be allowed to claim
on this approach would be extremely difficult. For discussion of theoretical issues, see
he does not consider the justificatory pattern I am
Buchanan, pp. 67-70-though
suggesting here. A contemporary secession movement among Inuit in the Northwest

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602

Ethics

April 1995

were recognized for such groups and if any group chose to assert it,
liberal societies might then treat aboriginal groups according to the
same principles by which liberal societies are bound to treat other
nonliberal (but rights-respecting) societies-though
in ways sensitive
to the history of the treatment of aboriginals so far.49
Less radically, one might view aboriginal groups-especially contemporary ones-as being outside of liberalism in a weaker sense.
However nonliberal the Native American groups were when European
settlers first arrived, centuries of contact and (in some respects, at
least) of treatment as fellow citizens may well have had a liberalizing
effect on the groups as they now exist. If the self-conceptions of individual members of aboriginal groups have been liberalized in that they
have come to recognize themselves as holders of at least some-but not
all-of the rights recognized in fully liberal societies, then we might
think of them as being outside liberalism in the weak sense. Liberal
societies mightjustify permitting them to enact special protective measures for themselves out of recognition of their having that special
status, even when those measures would limit rights individual members of the group would have if they were considered as full citizens
of the liberal society. By this pattern of argument, we might conclude
that a set of measures very much like those Kymlicka advocated should
in fact be recognized by liberal societies for the protection of certain
aboriginal groups butfor a completelydifferentset of reasons. This brings
us to the third question: By what concepts, in the liberal context, could
such measures be justified? And, in particular, could they be justified
by some notion of respect for individual persons without falling into
the difficulties that beset Kymlicka's approach?
Kymlicka distinguishes two kinds of respect liberals can have for
individuals: respect for an individual as an autonomous chooser simpliciter, and respect for an individual as an autonomous chooser who is
a member of some particular cultural group (p. 150). But the vocabulary of "liberal respect"-with its special admiration for choice makers-is not exhaustive of all that can be found respectworthy, even
by liberals, in a people or a culture. There are nonliberal forms of
Territories is discussed in Veryan Haysom and Jeff Richstone, "Customizing Law in
the Territories: Proposal for a Task Force on Customary Law in Nunavut," EtudesInuit
Studies 11 (1987): 91-105.
49. Rawls outlines one liberal conception of such principles, principles governing
relations between liberal and what he calls "traditional" or "hierarchical" societies, in
his manuscript "The Law of Peoples." Rawls's schema is meant to supply principles for
governing relations between sovereign nations. Questions about the relations between
actual liberal societies and seceding aboriginal subgroupings would be greatly complicated by their entangled histories, including issues of compensatory justice. For a stimulating discussion about reparations to aboriginal peoples, see Jeremy Waldron, "Superseding Historic Injustice," Ethics 103 (1992): 4-28.

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respect for individuals that even liberals might use as justification for
their actions and policies. For example, there is respect for individuals
in virtue of the importance to each of the attachments he has to his
own cultural community, even when that community is in important
respects outside the liberal settlement and does not wish fully to enter
that settlement (or perhaps wants no part of that settlement at all). If
it is true that the cultural foundations of some aboriginal groups put
those groups outside of liberalism, we may still admire those groups
in a variety of different ways, including ways that might convince us
that special measures should be enacted to protect them. If feature
(2) suggests it would be disastrous to many aboriginal groups if we
were to respect the individual members of those groups as autonomous
holders of liberal rights, we can recognize that the traditions of those
groups define them as being outside of liberalism. We best respect
the group members by not insisting on respecting them as individual
holders of the full set of liberal rights.
If certain aboriginal groups are outside of liberalism, then a discussion aimed at discovering whether special collective measures are
appropriate for them is not exactly a discussion about what the foundational liberal commitment to respect for the autonomy of persons
requires as a response to cultural plurality. Rather, the question Native
Americans raise may be an important, different one: How should
large liberal polities deal with the fragile pockets of aboriginal and
traditionally nonliberal groupings still existing within their borders?
Even if the answer cannot be founded on a peculiarly liberal notion
of respect for persons, still it can be founded on a notion of respect
that might properly be recognized by persons, and political orders,
that are liberal.

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