Former judge, senator and TRC chair Murray Sinclair's memoir reflects on truth, justice & community
Sinclair died on Nov. 4, 2024 at the age of 73
Murray Sinclair made his mark on Canadian society as a judge, activist, senator, the chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry.
The Manitoba-based Sinclair died on Nov. 4, 2024 at the age of 73.
He shared his experiences and life's philosophy in a recently published memoir titled Who We Are.
The book itself was 18 years in the making — he first started writing what would become his memoir when his granddaughter was born.
At the time, he was recovering from a small stroke and was concerned that he might not be around when his granddaughter was growing up.
He wanted to pass down his family history and experiences to her, so he began writing her letters about moments that had taught him life lessons and would give her insight into their Anishinaabe culture.
"Grandfathers are notorious for being elderly wise guys," said Sinclair in a 2024 interview with CBC Books. "So I thought I better play that role too."
Eventually, he wrote over 200 pages of letters that he planned on giving her when she's older. But throughout the process, Sinclair and his son, Niigaan, began to realize that the contents of those letters would be useful and interesting to the public as well — and his agent agreed.
The letters became the memoir Who We Are, which answers the four guiding questions of Sinclair's life — Where do I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I? — through stories about his remarkable career and trailblazing advocacy for Indigenous peoples' rights and freedoms.
He hoped that his book will validate the experiences of Indigenous readers living in a country built on colonial practices.
"Maybe we'll help others cope with it as well and learn from my actions in terms of what I did with it, what I did about it, and do something about it as well from their perspective."
He also hoped that all kinds of readers will be able to connect with the family stories and that non-Indigenous readers will learn history from an Indigenous perspective and understand how media and the education system have perpetuated harmful stereotypes.
I know that there are lessons in my life that will permeate across mine to other cultures and other elements of Canadian society.- Murray Sinclair
"It's intended to be a story about my life, really," he said. "I know that there are lessons in my life that will permeate across mine to other cultures and other elements of Canadian society.
"I wanted people to see that and to be influenced by it."
Who We Are, written with Sara Sinclair and Niigaan Sinclair, was released on Sept. 24, 2024. You can read an excerpt below.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission visited hundreds of communities and heard thousands of statements. In almost every community where non-Indigenous people were in the audience, one or more people came up to me and said, "I didn't know. I really didn't know. I attended school in this province, high school, university even, and I didn't know any of this. I had my entire schooling in this province and I was never taught a thing about Indian residential schools or the laws that were passed to maintain them."
Most Canadians were taught little or nothing about the Indian residential schools. But they were probably taught something, one way or another, about the history of Canada and the role of Indigenous peoples in that history. They were probably taught, for instance, that the history of Canada began "in 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue," or when John Cabot and Jacques Cartier landed on a small piece of land in the east and claimed the entire place for a foreign power. Nation-building has been the main theme of Canada's history curricula for a long time, and Aboriginal people—with a few notable exceptions trotted out as if to prove the rule—have been portrayed in textbooks as bystanders, or obstacles, to the enterprise of nation-building.
Many of today's leading and prominent Canadians attended school and university in an era long before educational authorities began to take their first critical look at curricula as it relates to Indigenous peoples. That education has influenced each and every one of us. As an Indigenous student, it denied me any sense of pride about the role of my ancestors in the history of this part of the world. For my non-Indigenous classmates, it taught them that we were wild and savage and uncivilized, and that given the conditions of Aboriginal people in modern society, we had not advanced very far from that state. My non-Indigenous classmates were taught to be proud of the accomplishments of their ancestors in taming this wild country and wrestling it from the savages and establishing this wonderful nation known as Canada.
[My education] taught me and others that my people were irrelevant, and, by implication, it caused me to feel that I was too.- Murray Sinclair
My education lacked relevance for me, and this was so despite my success at it. That success came at a price. It taught me and others that my people were irrelevant, and, by implication, it caused me to feel that I was too. It taught us to believe in the inferiority of Aboriginal people and in the inherent superiority of white European civilization, and in order to get the grades that I did, I was compelled to repeat that unconscious mantra. The system of my day did not teach us to respect Indigenous people because it never told us anything about the Aboriginal presence in this country that showed the humanity of the people. In public schools, we were all educated to be the same, and if we rebelled, resisted, or rejected that process, we were weeded out or we weeded ourselves out. Of the Indigenous students I started grade school with, few ever graduated from high school. Even my brother and sister did not. But while I and others succeeded in that system, it was not without cost to our own humanity and our sense of self-respect. These are the legacies all of us find ourselves in today.
Excerpted from Who We Are: Four Questions For a Life and a Nation by Murray Sinclair. Copyright © 2024 The Honourable Murray Sinclair I.P.C., OM. Published by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
