ABSTRACT
Indigenous peoples in Canada face chronic and systemic inequality and social injustice compared with non-Canadians. Yet state policies and programs aimed at addressing inequality and social injustice appear to be focused on aspects of inequality and social injustice, while an underlying injustice remains intact. As well, some policies and programs ostensibly intended to address some harms can end up perpetuating additional ones by leaving the underlying injustice unaddressed. In this paper, the author examines recognition theory and vulnerability theory for the purpose of determining whether there is an underlying assumption embedded in liberal notions of state/individual relations that results in a failure to hear indigenous claims properly. The author argues that the hierarchical relationships at the heart of theories of vulnerability and of recognition cannot capture either the injustices or the forms of remediation that would be required to address them.
