Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State by Alan C. Cairns (review)

558 The Canadian Historical Review Easter observance in 1909 or a Montreal lunch counter in 1956. But they are not let down by the captions alone. Too often the presentation is gray, grainy, or cramped. The images on pages 346-7 highlight the problem. Across the two pages runs a famous photograph of Trudeau, Turner, Chretien, and Pearson standing together. Squeezed along the top is a string of four tiny images that stand for the 1960s: a protest march against the Vietnam War; Bob Dylan speaking to Robbie Robertson ; hippies; and Yorkville. The unique character ofthe first photograph sags under the burden of the frieze, while the others are hardly worth printing at the size. Again and again photographs would benefit from isolation within margins and whole page and sharper reproduction. This is a case where less would have been more. Canada: Our Century is a compilation of photographic raw material, most of it good, some of it excellent. Little is provided in the way of context for the images or rationale for selection. Furthermore, the authors eschew interpretation, analysis, and explanation as ifthese were dangers to be avoided. They leave the readers to make their own way. It is hard to think that we would publish a collection ofwritten documents with so little in the way of apparatus and interpretation, at least to the general public. Yet the assumption is that photographs are more immediately accessible to the eye and can speak without the necessity of mediation. This is, at some level, to abdicate our role as historians. M. BROOK TAYLOR Mount Saint Vincent University Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State. ALAN c. CAIRNS. Vancouver: UBC Press 2000. Pp. 288. $39·95· Citizens Plus advances a debate in which Canadian historians have not shown much interest, even though it is one that turns in large part on historical events and processes. The issue is how should Aboriginal peoples and non-Aboriginal Canadians relate to each other constitutionally , politically, and socially. Or, as author Alan Cairns poses it, 'How can Aboriginal peoples be Canadian, and how can Canadians be Aboriginal? The task is to recognize two overlapping communities and identities.' In some ways, Citizens Plus delivers a warning similar to the one in the Preliminary Report (1965) ofthe Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, albeit in less alarmist language. Laurendeau-Dunton observed of another important public policy issue - how French and non-French relate to each other - that 'Canada, without being fully conscious ofthe fact, is passing through the greatest crisis in its history.' Book Reviews 559 Historians might remember that earlier policy debate as one in which they were active and influential. Cairns brings impeccable academic credentials, vast experience, and well-honed skills to the task of advancing constitutional debate. Shortly after completing his D.Phil. at Oxford in 1963, he served with the Hawthorn inquiry, a federally funded survey of Indians' social and economic conditions whose 1966-7 report pioneered the idea that Indians should be treated as 'citizens plus.' Cairns enjoyed a distinguished career at the University of British Columba as a widely published and highly regarded authority on Canadian federalism. This interest led to a consideration of Aboriginal peoples and constitutional change, a preoccupation that resulted in his devoting his 1995 Brenda and David McLean Lectures in Canadian Studies to 'Aboriginal People in Canada: From Audience to Centre Stage.' In retirement, Cairns worked on revising these lectures, including during his tenure in 1997-8 as Saskatchewan Law Foundation Chair at the University of Saskatchewan. The result is five gracefully written analytical chapters that should be required reading for everyone, including Canadian historians, interested in public policy. Cairns aims to refocus the debate from one between two options, which he sees as problematic, to one involving his own 'citizens plus' solution. The drive to assimilate Aboriginal peoples, he notes, has been with us for more than a century and a half, and, although for a long time it did not stimulate public debate because its Aboriginal opponents were silenced, it is back in play because right-wingers have taken it from earlier liberal advocates and given it a 'harsher, defensive, and more strident' tone. Although...