Murray Sinclair

It was December 15, 2015, in Canada.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission handed down its final report. Over the years, more than seven thousand former students of Indigenous residential schools had come forward to tell what they had lived through.

At the head of the Commission was an Anishinaabe judge from Manitoba. His name was Murray Sinclair.

The report spoke of "cultural genocide." It set out 94 Calls to Action.

Murray Sinclair was born in 1951 on the former St. Peter's reserve, near Selkirk, north of Winnipeg. He was a member of Peguis First Nation.

He also carried an Anishinaabe name: Mizanay Gheezhik. The One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky.

His mother, Florence, died when he was still a baby. His grandparents, Jim and Catherine Sinclair, raised him, along with his three siblings.

His parents and his grandparents had gone through the residential schools.

He finished high school in Selkirk in 1968. He then studied law at the University of Manitoba, graduating in 1979. The following year, he was called to the bar.

In 1988, at thirty-seven, he became Associate Chief Judge of the Provincial Court. He was Manitoba's first Indigenous judge, and the second in Canada.

That same year, Premier Howard Pawley named him co-commissioner of an inquiry into justice and Indigenous peoples in Manitoba. Its report, in 1991, found systemic racism in the justice system. It made 296 recommendations.

Sinclair also taught, as an adjunct professor at the University of Manitoba.

In 2001, he was appointed to the Court of Queen's Bench, once again the first Indigenous judge there.

In 2007, he was asked to lead the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. At first he declined. In 2009, he accepted.

Then began six years of listening.

Thousands of former students came to testify. The judge listened to them.

To him, these stories did not concern Indigenous peoples alone. They concerned the whole country.

He also pointed out that students in public schools had received the same message: that Indigenous peoples were inferior.

In April 2016, he was appointed to the Senate. He served there until January 2021. He then became Chancellor of Queen's University, from 2021 to 2024.

He was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 2024, he received the Order of Manitoba.

Murray Sinclair died on November 4, 2024, in Winnipeg.

His work of listening and reconciliation, the work of an Anishinaabe judge, echoes Ubuntu, without merging with it.

The One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky had listened. Then he put into words, for a whole country, what thousands of children, now grown, had entrusted to him.