Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair never fully retired.
Even after facing some of the country’s darkest chapters in his work, often being the first Indigenous representation in legal settings and living a life in the public eye, in more recent years, the lawyer, judge, Truth and Reconciliation commissioner and senator upheld leadership roles and addressed crowded rooms.
Sinclair died on November 4 at 73 at a Winnipeg hospital surrounded by his family.
Born in 1951 to the Ojibwe name Mizanay Gheezhik, meaning The One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky, Sinclair was raised by his Anishinaabe grandparents north of Selkirk, Manitoba on the St. Peter’s Indian Reserve. He was a member of Peguis First Nation.
The Globe and Mail interviewed Sinclair in May, highlighting the humour and warmth that perpetuated everything he set his heart to. In the May profile, Sinclair said, “I am always guided by the sense of responsibility to family and to community.”
“Everything I’ve ever done in my life has been about that question, ‘What is it that I can do to help our family, our community to be safer?’”
Sinclair led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), which was established due to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history.
“[Sinclair was] someone who taught all of us … how to listen, how to share and learn from and care for survivors' stories,” said Interim Academic Director of the UBC Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre (IRSHDC) Tricia Logan in an interview with The Ubyssey.
“He was also teaching Indigenous ways of knowing, Indigenous ways of listening because it wasn't only the substance, the content of what survivors were sharing, what the commissioners were sharing, what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the different versions of reconciliation were looking at … it was how it was being done.”
As the commission’s chair, Sinclair spent six years examining the lasting effects of residential schools, fostering reconciliation among former students, their families, their communities and all Canadians and educating the public about the history and legacy of the residential school system.
Logan explained that as a spokesperson for hundreds of thousands of stories linked to Canada’s residential schools, Sinclair had the ability to represent these stories collectively from a distinct Anishinaabe and Indigenous perspective that honoured the way those stories were told and shared.
“Because they were shared in ceremony, they were shared in a sacred space,” said Logan. “[That] gave their voices that amount of respect.”
The TRC presented a final report in 2015, which outlined 94 calls to action, forming a course of action for change in the country. All the documents collected by the TRC are now housed at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, where Sinclair’s son, Niigaan Sinclair, is a professor.
In that same Globe article, Niigaan commended his father’s love of connecting with people.
“Dad can’t not talk to people and visit with people,” he said in the article. “Of course, he knows everybody because he’s done everything.”
It’s not hard to see how Sinclair’s love for his community translated into his work as a trailblazer for Indigenous representation in governance and a relentless advocate of truth and reconciliation in Canada.
Sinclair was appointed to the Canadian Senate by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016 and held the role until 2021. Sinclair was also the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba and the second in Canada, serving from 1988–2009. Up until his passing, Sinclair mentored young lawyers and was the special adviser to the principal on reconciliation at Queen’s University, where he served as the first Indigenous chancellor at the university.
As co-commissioner of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, which the Government of Manitoba formed in April 1988, Sinclair helped investigate and make recommendations to the provincial government on the relationship between the justice system and Indigenous people.
Sinclair’s passing showed his impact on UBC’s campus, with the IRSHDC and UBC School of Social Work extending thoughts to his family and the Faculty of Medicine’s Respectful Environments, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Office calling Sinclair a “champion of justice and reconciliation” in a tribute.
“At the [IRSHDC] and to Indigenous faculty, especially to Indigenous students, in doing work as an Indigenous leader, I think you face all kinds of questions and barriers and criticisms,” said Logan. “I think there's examples and teachings that students, faculty [and] staff at UBC connect to.”
Sinclair’s memoir Who We Are: Four Questions For a Life and a Nation was published this September. For most of his life, Sinclair was a listener, Niigaan told The Globe and Mail in May. As he alluded to, it was Sinclair’s turn to tell his own story.
“These are things that I think he wants to give to us before he travels to the west as they say in our culture, which is, enters the next spiritual phase of his life, where he goes and visits our relatives,” said Niigaan.
Logan said Sinclair was often quoted and spoke about “putting truth before reconciliation.”
“It shouldn't be understated what it means to listen to those stories and listen to truths,” said Logan. “Talking about the seven generations before and the seven generations after that will carry on with reconciliation and the different ways that reconciliation can be defined or redefined.”
As the web of Sinclair’s teachings and dedication expands across all the spheres he influenced — justice, reconciliation and politics — Logan believes this carrying of knowledge across disciplines will help keep Sinclair’s work and character alive.
She referenced a famous quote of Sinclair’s, “The truth will set you free. But first, it’s going to piss you off.”
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