The Current - The brightness and beauty of being indigenous

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

10 years after the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, three members of the family of the late Murray Sinclair, the chair of the commission, reflect on his legacy. Stephanie and Sara Sinclair are the co-editors of two new collections of writing, "A Steady Brightness of Being" and "You Were Made for this World." They talk about their own family history, and the importance of sharing stories, knowledge and culture — as a path to a better future. And Niigaan Sinclair, Murray's son, and columnist and university professor, reflects on his Dad's lessons of love, and the time he spent with at his father's bedside before he died.

The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in Canada, and Google is helping Canadians innovate in ways both big and small, from mapping accessible spaces so the disabled community can explore with confidence, to unlocking billions in domestic tourism revenue. Thousands of Canadian companies are innovating with Google AI. Innovation is Canada's story. Let's tell it together. Find out more at g.co slash Canadian Innovation. This is a CBC podcast.

Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. This is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. When it was first established as a holiday four years ago, it was a direct response to call to action number 80 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. The call was for a federal day of commemoration. The intent was to look to the past and the history of residential schools in order to chart a path for true reconciliation.

in the future. The reality of indigenous life, past, present, and future is also the focus of a new pair of books. They bring together letters, essays, and illustrations from prominent indigenous Canadians like this letter by Therese Mayett, a writer from Seabird Island Band in British Columbia. To Indians now and forever surviving, I believe we are a steady brightness of being like a running wheel of light. Native people, people carry power. All indigenous people are bound to something inextricably connected to the land, the sky, and the universe itself. That passage inspired the title of one of these new books, A Steady Brightness of Being. It is a book for adults. The other is meant for children

and it is called You Were Made for This World. Both anthologies are co-edited by sisters Sarah and Stephanie Sinclair. Stephanie Sinclair is the publisher of McClellan and Stuart. Sarah Sinclair is an oral historian, and the late Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was their uncle. Good morning to you both. Good morning. Sarah, tell me about that phrase, a steady brightness of being. This inspired, as I said, this book title, one of the book titles, what does that mean to you? It means that despite continual, what feel like, forever sustained efforts,

to destroy people, culture, language, and ways of being that we endure. And we endure with joy and with light and continue to find ways to celebrate who we are. Stephanie, what about you? You're nodding. I think it's a celebration of community. And that's really what we strive for with the books was to bring so many different lived experiences and perspectives together, but really that honor the beauty of being indigenous despite its complexities and burdens. Tell me more about this.

Why two books? Two books for different audiences in some way? It started with the kids' book, and then it became clear that the adult book was sort of a necessary companion piece to the kids' book to facilitate wider conversations

within families, both for indigenous families and non-addigenous families, that the kids' book is an entry point to one conversation and the adult book, a different one. And some of this came out of a conversation in your own family, right?

It sure does. It's like, tell me about that. My failed conversation. You see it as a failed conversation? Well, maybe not. Tell us about it and then we'll go back. Okay. So my son, Cole, was going to kindergarten and it was, we're coming up on September 30th.

And my kids both identify as indigenous. And I was worried that he wasn't going to be prepared for questions or some of the conversations that were going to happen in the classroom. So I tried to talk to him about my musham and how, you know, my musham went to residential school and how that impacted his mushroom, who is our father. and how then that impacted me and now like it's in him, his indigenity and how we're all working together to like honor the memories of those who went to residential school

and I wanted him to be able to speak to that and I felt like okay this is the parenting win you know like I nailed it I was really confident dropped him off and then later that day went to pick him up and his teacher pulled me aside and said so you know we did talk about September 30th and Cole put up his hand and said well I went to residential school when I was three

but I survived and the teachers were really rude. And I was like kind of blown away that I'm surrounded by so many, you know, smart and well-resourced people. And I still didn't know how to have that conversation, at least not as effectively as I would have hoped at that first time. So for me, in many ways, thinking about the kids' book, it was the result of that. Like, oh, this could be an entry point for people like me who are trying to have that conversation with their children and not entirely sure where to start. it's an interesting thing because it does lead to a larger conversation, even if it didn't perhaps go the way that you wanted it to. It turns into something bigger. How much did you know, Sarah, I'll ask you this too. How much did you and Stephanie know in your childhoods about your

own family history and indigenous background? It's something that I think so much about. And I remember being a child. We always knew that our father was native and that we were native. But it always also felt like there was some separation between that part of us and our everyday lives in Toronto. We knew and we met this wonderful, huge, sprawling native family that lived in the prairies in Manitoba. And we grew up at what felt like quite a distance from that in Toronto. We heard snippets of stories about our grandfather's experience. We heard stories about our father's childhood. We heard that he was not actually told that he was indigenous,

that he loved to play cowboys and Indians with this huge group of cousins, and that one day actually Murray, Sinclair, in a game of cowboys and Indians, said, hey, you know that you're one of the Indians, right? And that my father, in that moment, connected to, I think, what had been a deeper sense of knowing that, of course, he did know that, but it wasn't something that was discussed or named in his own childhood home. His father, Elmer Sinclair, was a residential school survivor who came out of that experience, as many did with a deep shame about the culture, the language.

And he raised his seven sons as altar boys in the Catholic Church without a lot of discussion about that part of himself. And so there were these, we grew up with little pieces of stories of stories of stories about that part of our history. And we always knew that it was a part of who we were and that the history was running through our blood as well and in our contemporary lives. But it felt at some remove as children. Stephanie, how did you experience that? What was that like for you? I think I felt confused about it. I don't think I really understood what being indigenous really meant or what it would mean for me until in my 30s, really. I definitely

as a kid understood that we were indigenous. You know, our dad did some work with Native Child and Family Services. We attended powwows, but it wasn't, it wasn't discussed as being a part of who we are in the same way that our mother's side was discussed as a part

of who we are. What changed when you were in your 30s? You know, the TRC and Murray and reading and sort of my own education. And, yeah, I think my own awareness and like willingness and ability to really interrogate certain realities. Sarah, I introduced you as an oral historian.

If families don't have those stories passed on, whether it's orally, whether it's through writing, what gets lost, do you think? I mean, that sounds like an obvious question, but it's a very personal question. Yeah, you know, I feel like we grew up in the prime conditions to reflect upon that question because our maternal grandmother lived in our childhood home. She moved in when I was eight years old. And she was a German Jewish refugee. So she had experienced her own traumas in her life, fleeing Nazi Germany.

She lost her grandmother and other relatives who didn't get out. And I think by the time she was our grandmother, the world had made space for her stories. She had done a lot of her own work in therapy and in other contexts to move herself into the present moment. in a way that allowed her to tell us stories. She was a watercolor painter, so literally our childhood home was full of her beautiful paintings that represented the German fairy tales of her childhood.

We really lived with her history in our present. And I really thought about that a lot, even as a kid, that the world made space for her stories, and therefore we were able to hear the stories of the hard times that she'd endured, but also she was a little. able to pass down the culture that preceded those hard times, the culture of our own happy childhood. And that seemed to be in very stark contrast to the experience of our paternal

grandfather, Elmer, who experienced trauma as a child during his time at Indian residential school. And for me, it was clear that, you know, the trauma interrupted not just stories about the time at the school, but also served to interrupt the transfer of culture that he experienced before his time at the school. It was like this real, a great interruption that prevented him from sharing culture or story from before that traumatic experience as well. How do you see these books then, Sarah, as a continuation of that and a continuation of the work that you do as an historian? Yeah, I think so much of oral history, the investigation of the past, you know,

both the individual and collective past, it has so much to do with the future. The opportunity to share, past, story, history, culture, language, to move it into the present, to pass it on to the next generation. It's a big circle, you know, and the more that we can investigate the past, the more story we can move through the present to the future, to the next generations, the more we're able to live who we are and who we're meant to be. It's really something that, I mean, we mentioned Marie Sinclair in the introduction and throughout this conversation. He contributed a story, story to the kids' version of this book stuff. Tell me a little bit about that. The Ugly Dugling. Yeah.

Murray, you know, and he talks about this in his memoir too, really sort of did, was burdened with the shame that so many indigenous people have had, you know, what I had to grapple with and work through. He lived through with that his entire life. Yeah. Yeah. And he talks about imposter syndrome and really sort of feeling like the ugly duckling for much of his life until he sort of embraced his own indigenousity and joined the lodge and started to participate in ceremonies as a nashnabe man. And so he wrote the introduction to the kids' book, or the forward to the kid's book, which is his version of The Ugly Duckling and him sort of grappling with always feeling like the ugly duckling, always feeling like an outsider, until he sort of really embraced who he was as a spiritual person. And then he discovered, in fact, he is this one.

What do you think that kids now reading that introduction or having it read to them should grab from that? That it's okay to be different, you know, and that our differences are often our beauty. You know, and that even the things that might be complicated in time, you know, reveal themselves to be truthful and beautiful. That's hard for kids. It's hard for adults to wrap their heads around. It's hard for kids to wrap their heads around too. Yeah. I think one of the beautiful things about you are made for this world is also the art. So it's like Murray's letter is accompanied by this, you know, beautiful drawing of a duck. And for my kids, like my daughter is now six.

So I don't think she fully has the comprehension to completely understand everything that Murray's saying. But for her, it's in the art. So she's drawing the duck and that she's drawing the spawn and how do you get from one to the other. And like Sarah's saying here, I think you get from one to the other in truth telling and in community and in sort of embracing story. And in that there's empowerment. So let us bring one other guest into this conversation. Nigon Sinclair, familiar voice on this program, friend of the current. son of Maurice Sinclair, columnist and professor in Winnipeg. He's in our Winnipeg studio.

Nikon, good morning to you. Good morning. You forgot to mention cousin of guests and takes being voluntold well. It's the most important thing. The voluntold, I'll leave you to that, but the cousin part is very, very important. You are a contributor to a steady brightness of being. And this is a different way of adding something to this conversation. This is the text of the eulogy. that you delivered for your dad at his memorial last fall. It's addressed as a letter, Dear Canada, it's really moving to read it. Tell me a little bit about the context,

how, what you were trying to convey to Canadians, dear Canada, as you were preparing that. Well, first thing, I guess you should know is that it was fairly organic. I was only supposed to be the emcee of the event in which we had done a number of ceremonies. As Medewan people, we have a four-day ceremony when someone's vessel, their body passes on from this world into the next, and their spirit is released, and then they start a one-year journey, which my father would soon be ending here. And the day of, I got to the event, and we had already been through four days of ceremonies, so we're all exhausted, my siblings and I, and I got there, and I realized that there were all of these political people.

at this very big event at the big downtown arena where the professional hockey team plays here in Winnipeg on Treaty 1. And everyone was going to talk about Dad in terms of sort of one singular event as the TRC or his time in Ottawa. And I realized that no one was really going to talk about who he was and what he did, which is far more than in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It's about him as a father. It's about him as a person

who traveled to nearly every single church, every single school, every single boardroom and classroom through this entire province and virtually throughout the country that he was invited to for nothing, for just simply because he believed in a principle of love, and he believed that this country could be a better place, and if we included everyone, and particularly young indigenous peoples. And so that's what I talked about in the speech, which was fairly organic, and I tried to rewrite it as I could for the entry into this book. And one of the ways that I framed it was is it's very hard to talk about my father's lessons of love because I am so angry at Canada for having taken him away. You know, none of our parents got an opportunity to dream or to be a part of what they wanted to be. My dad dreamed of being a carpenter, but he never got a shot at that because he was too busy fighting racism. He spent his entire life basically fighting the good fight for indigenous peoples and arguing the basic principle that indigenous peoples are human beings with a country that just didn't want to face that reality. And so I was very angry at Canada for a long time, but I also, through the teachings of my father, realized that his principle of love is really what's there at the end.

You talk about that anger as well in your introduction, Stephanie. You asked whether this country deserved Murray. and you say that he would want you to say yes, but you're angry. Where's that anger in you? I think I'm working through it in part. I try to be inspired by Murray, you know, and to really take his, you know, skills and really sort of organic ability to mediate any room he walked into, you know,

and to really enter every hard conversation without fear and never ostracizing anyone or shaming anyone, but inviting hard perspectives into dialogues with each other. Megan, in that piece, you talk about the time that you spent at your father's bedside as he was sick in hospital and the conversations that you had with him. What did you learn about your father? I mean, that's a really special, hard, precious time. But it's a time that, as you said, in some ways you were denied earlier in his life because he was doing the work that he felt called to do in this country. What did you learn about your father when you were there?

Well, it's a bittersweet kind of story because on one level, you never want to see your parent or anyone that you love so much go through such immense pain and struggle. My father really had a hard time in the last few years. His final event that he went to publicly was the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, the very first one in Ottawa, which he then got COVID and never went on the road again. And so watching that and being there and taking care of him during some very difficult times and sleeping beside him on the floor in the hospital room was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. But, I mean, what a gift. Like, it is, it is so absurd that the biggest gift in my life that my father gave me was during his hardest time because I got to be with him every day.

And oftentimes he would be heading out to a flight or a hotel or, a speaking event of some kind, or the Senate, or the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or before that, many different commissions they headed up as a judge. And finally, I got time with my dad. And so that was really hard, but also really beautiful, like really intensely, an intimate time in which I got to know my father on every level. And in those really kind of quiet moments, it was more about what we didn't say and how we just sat together and slept together and sometimes washed.

Sometimes I would wash him and care for him and dress him. And it was a very, very beautiful gift for me. And what that really said to me is that during all those times when I felt angry and upset about my father spending as much time with the country as he ever spent with any of us as children, I realized that he was thinking about me and he was spending that time with me the best that he could because he wanted me to have a better life. He wanted his granddaughter, my daughter, to have a better life. And he was always thinking about us. That's what I carry forward in my life because it's given me a profound sense of hope and inspiration. And also that his work and his legacy is a part of all of our lives. It's not for me to do.

It's not for my cousins to do. It's certainly for the entire country to do. There's a famous phrase my father has that at the end of the TRCs is he says, we have shown you the mountain now we call upon you to do the climbing he doesn't say now Nigon will do the climbing or Sarah and Stephanie will do the climbing or Justin Trudeau or Mark Carney

or Pierre Pollyev will do the climbing for you there will be no one there to save you you must do the climbing yourself and we must all do it together and we will stumble much more than we will climb but we must be there for each other we're going to pause there on that quotation from the late Murray Sinclair I want to continue this conversation coming up after the news. I'm speaking with three Sinclair's, Nigon Sinclair,

professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba, and Sarah and Stephanie Sinclair, the co-editors of two new anthologies, a steady brightness of being, and you are made for this world. The late Murray... The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in Canada, and Google is helping Canadians innovate in ways both big and small, from mapping accessible spaces so the disabled community can explore with confidence. To unlocking billions in domestic tourism revenue, thousands of Canadian companies are

innovating with Google AI. Innovation is Canada's story. Let's tell it together. Find out more at G.com slash Canadian Innovation. Okay, here's a few movies. Guess who is the common thread between them? Lost in Translation, Ghost World, The Prestige, and like a million Marvel movies. I'm talking about Scarlett Johansson, the highest grossing actor of all time. Scarlett's directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, came to this year's Toronto International Film Festival, and I talked to her all about loneliness, forgiveness, and compassion, all themes in her new film. Find our chat on Q with Tom Power, wherever you get your podcasts, including on YouTube. St. Clair was chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. His son, Nigon Sinclair,

is with us, and so are two of his nieces, Stephanie and Sarah Sinclair. The two of them, have collaborated on a pair of books, a steady brightness of being, and you are made for this world. And I want to pick up the conversation to talk particularly about something that Nikon was saying at the end of our last little bit there, particularly about what non-Indigenous Canadians can be doing toward reconciliation. And to get into that, we want to have a reading from one of these books. Jennifer Grants is a principal investigator of the Indigenous Ecology Lab at the University of British Columbia and a member of the Lytton First Nation. And here she is reading the beginning of her letter addressed two allies.

How is it that simultaneously I want your help and want you to leave me alone? That I recognize I cannot do all the work of healing the land with our communities by myself, but don't want you to do it either. That I can respect and praise your skills and knowledge, but do not seek them out of suspicion of your motivations and intentions. I find myself so often in the same moment, happy to build bridges of understanding between our cultures, yet wanting to burn that same bridge.

Proudly taking up the space you helped make for me, but not wanting that space. Sarah, how does what Jennifer is saying there stick with you? I think that so often, historically, the ways in which settler communities have engaged with indigenous people are in sort of these snippets. You know, like with storytelling historically, I think part of the reason that we are so proud of these books is that they offer glimpses of people as full people, that they're

not just dipping into the hardest or most traumatic moments in people's lives that were invited into richer, longer conversation with people. And I think that Jennifer is asking for the same thing. She's asking for the whole process of reconciliation to slow down. And I don't want to speak for her. But in conversations that I've had with other people who do similar work, there's a frustration with being asked to come in and participate in a process that is happening at somebody else's pace and speed.

Nekon, do you want to pick up on that? And particularly just in terms of how people should be thinking about what they're doing on a day like today. So much about that piece is about space. I think many people, many Canadians are, and, you know, newcomer communities and many indigenous people as well, we're only making space for each other for the very first time. And what that means is, is that when we make meaningful, kind, and generous space for each other, we consider, we learn, we become aware, but then that's only one part of the equation. That's kind of the truth part. And the reconciliation part is how do we take action once we know that spaces are not safe in this country, spaces have been stolen in this country and continue to be stolen when we begin to realize that certain spaces have to be created and they have to be returned and they have to be constructed in not comfortable ways, but also extremely visionary ways, that when that space is created, that we have to really cherish those spaces.

We have to fight hard to maintain them. And then we also have to make sure that we're always struggling together. Reconciliation is about our children and that our children coming together from all different walks of life and cultures and genders and positions and geographies and to see each other that everybody belongs here and that everyone's a part of this life here. There was never an intention for us to be indigenous and settler. That was very much created out of the Indian Act and division and laws that have been imposed upon our communities. The vision of our ancestors, all of our ancestors, was always to be that we would build lives together

and to use the famous treaty image of the two-er-wampum that we would travel the river together, sometimes in separate canoes, but that we would still experience the waves together. Stephanie, it's a decade since Maurice Sinclair delivered the final report. Ten years is a long time, or it's also not very long at all? How much has been accomplished in ten years? Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.

I would say, yeah. You know, Sarah and I, our dad runs an organization called Indigenous Watchdog that actually, like, tracks the progress of the calls to action. And it's frustrating to look at it. My hope is with the 10th anniversary. There will be more conversations that involve more people to say, like, okay, well, let's look at the things that are immediately attainable. And there are so many things that are. We can read the summary.

You know, you can listen to our friend Sheila Rogers, you know, and she recorded it from Marie's audiobook. You can read 52 ways to reconcile by David A. Robertson, you know, there's so many things that are very, very attainable that people can be doing that I think also honor what Jennifer Grunz is saying, which is that it requires partnership and it requires curiosity and it requires humility for two people to enter a space and actually work together instead of only allowing the work if it's convenient. So, you know, we're on a path, but it will be slow. Nigan, a decade in, in the wake of that final report, what sort of momentum do you think there is? An interesting moment in this country right now. And certainly what we saw over the summer, more Canadian flags you could possibly imagine people celebrating this country, a resurgence of national pride. Where does that leave momentum when it comes to the project of truth and reconciliation? Well, there's lots of very real and very legitimate reasons to feel pessimistic. We have a federal government that certainly has different motivations and different interests and reconciliation than the previous 10 years under Justin Trudeau, which saw the most progressive strides in Canadian history.

When it came to indigenous peoples, regardless of how you look at it, there were very extremely interesting and for the very first time attempts to engage indigenous rights, engage child welfare, indigenous languages. we can debate the merits of some of those steps, but they've never been done before. And so what we see, for example, at the university that I work at, the highest number of indigenous student enrolled in university programs, that's doctors, nurses, lawyers,

you know, all of these things that, you know, all of our ancestors worked very, very hard to get to be where we are. So it would be impossible to deny that there is progression because we are seeing some successes. But we're also seeing much kickback. We're seeing much struggles that Canadians have in which to talk about what it really means to reconcile, which is not ornamental territorial acknowledgments, empty gestures,

but to actually talk about what it means to share land. What does it mean to share resources? What does it mean to actually have a country in which indigenous peoples are a partner, not just some other wing of a department? And that takes very significant effort, change, and commitment. This is not the time to rest on our laurels. This is the time to double down and take focus on every single aspect of the country. And the good news is that when indigenous peoples are fully a part of this country, we will have air to breathe.

We will have lands and waters that we can enjoy and build our lives and families. And that we will also be the strongest and most unified country that we ever will be because we are not those things. We are in a climate crisis and an economic crisis and so on. And that is mostly because we have mistreated groups of people. We have mistreated ourselves as a society, and we continue to ostracize and marginalize, and we need to do something else. And I suggest that reconciliation is the most innovative, visionary, and most important economic and environmental plan that we can do going forward into the future. And that's really what I think the hope of what this time period provides for us in this critical juncture of reconciliation is that that vision is right in front of us. It's in our universities, it's within our children, it's within everyday society and whether, you know, young musicians want to create things that we've never seen before or our governments want to have a First Nations premier for the very first time or whether it'd be indigenous business operators who are saving the country in lots of different ways.

You know, every Canadian has an opportunity to engage in ways that have never been done before. Sarah, these books in many ways are about, I said that, you know, you look at the past to help chart the future. What does that future look like to you? You know, building upon what Nigan was saying, I think a lot about accountability in the work that I do. There's a question about what the listener's responsibility is to the teller of story. And I feel like this understanding or understanding is probably too strong a word, but this telling of history, this knowledge of what happened at the residential schools, you know, as one instrument of colonialism that is starting to be more known by more Canadians.

but still not all. We are really just at the beginning of knowing history. And so the next part of that is what is the response to this knowing? And for me, that's always about accountability. So the question is, you know, what do we do next? What do Canadians decide to do on an individual level, on collective levels, in response to this knowing that we are only, only now beginning to absorb? And I think about Murray, and I think that, you know, one of the things that was very clear to me in the time that I spent with him is that he really, really knew that this was going to be slow work.

That didn't mean, you know, don't work. That didn't mean don't do everything you can right now. But he had a profound sense of the time that it would take to build a new future. When you think of that future, Stephanie, just finally, you mentioned your kids. What do you want that future to look like for them? I can see it in them. You can see it in them already. Absolutely.

Yeah. You light up when you just said that too. Like you had this big grin on your face. Yeah, I love it. I love it. You know, she tapes my big beaded earrings to the top of her ears. You know, she loves the different art we have around the house. You know, they came with me to the Winnipeg launch for a steady brightness of being.

And how they both were engaged in the conversation and they are wanting to understand our family history. They're wanting to understand what they can do, how they can. can, you know, celebrate their own indigenity. They want to find their names. You know, they're, asking questions that I didn't know how to ask until I was well into adulthood. So to me, I celebrate it every day. That's exciting. It's exciting to see that future right there. Yeah. I'm really glad to have the chance to talk to all three of you. Thank you very much. Thanks for having us. You got you. Thank you. Sarah and Stephanie Sinclair are the co-editors of two new anthologies, a steady brightness of being, and you are made for this world.

Nigon Sinclair is a columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press and professor of indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.