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At some point, the party leaders will have to address the myriad of Aboriginals issues that will shape the future of our country

Historically defeated, the French Canadian in Canada — and in Quebec especially — today walks with his or her shoulders held high, properly self-respecting and in turn respected by the English-speaking majority as politically equal and as hailing from a culture that is just as prestigious as the Anglo-Saxon culture of the historical victors in North America. The French language is not only studied in all of the schools of English-speaking Canada, but is held in equally high regard in official national institutions and in the minds of most Canadians.

Part of the push to co-equal status in Canada for the Aboriginal people will involve making the binational logic at the heart of Canadian constitutionalism far more porous for purposes of Aboriginal representation, control of territory and governing responsibilities. This will involve reimagining the internal borders and identities of Canada in ways that are more eclectic than the 10 provinces-plus-three territories mental map that most Canadians currently have of our country.

A pivotal aspect of this push must also be the revival and mainstreaming of certain Aboriginal languages, including major ones like Cree, Ojibwe, Inuktitut and Michif. If one or more of these languages were, as with the Maori language in New Zealand, made official, this would lend sudden prestige to Aboriginal cultures that were relegated to the peripheries of Canadian society.

If the vision of Aboriginal Canadians being resuscitated from strategic defeat into political and cultural co-equality is morally compelling, it nonetheless comes with significant risks to the efficacy and legitimacy of the Canadian political project. The courts, which have over the last four decades laid the jurisprudential foundations for eventual policy and statutory pushes by our executive and legislative branches, have had precious little to say about these risks.