"One of the Cultural Minorities"? Indigenous Peoples and the Creation of Official Multiculturalism.

This article examines the role of Indigenous peoples in the advocacy and development of Canadian multiculturalism policy during the late 1960s and early 1970s, challenging the notion that they were excluded from these discussions. It highlights Indigenous activism’s influence on the early years of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (RCBB) and the tentative political alliances formed between Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities advocating for multiculturalism. However, the article argues that the federal government’s 1969 White Paper, which sought to abolish Indigenous “special status,” diverted Indigenous leaders from multicultural activism, and that the eventual policy of “multiculturalism within a bilingual framework” announced in 1971 initially excluded but then awkwardly included Indigenous peoples as one cultural minority group. The policy, shaped by settler colonial assumptions and emphasizing individual rights over group rights, represented a top-down compromise that limited the transformative potential of a more inclusive, syncretic multiculturalism.