The Current - What we can learn from the late Murray Sinclair

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Anishinaabe senator and renowned lawyer Murray Sinclair died Monday, aged 73. Matt Galloway talks to Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew and Indigenous advocate Cindy Blackstock about the man they knew, and his legacy.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Outside the Manitoba legislature, in the place where a statue of Queen Victoria once stood, a sacred fire now burns in memory of Murray Sinclair, the former senator and head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, died yesterday in Winnipeg. He is being remembered as a trailblazing judge,

a powerful advocate for Indigenous people who helped Canadians hear painful truths about our history. Here he is speaking at the release of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission describing how he was changed by hearing the experiences of residential school survivors. Each and every one of us who listened to them would go home at the end of each day and we would hold our children and our grandchildren closer as we proceeded. Not so much to protect them from some invisible force,

but to gain the strength that we would need each day to go forth and to listen once again. I'm joined now by somebody who knew Murray Sinclair well. Wab Kanu is the Premier of Manitoba. Premier, good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. I'm sorry for your loss. Well, it's all of our loss collectively as Canadians, but thank you. You were very emotional yesterday at the legislature and speaking about Murray Sinclair. What was going through your mind as you were talking about him?

legislature and speaking about Murray Sinclair. What was going through your mind as you were talking about him? We've just lost one of the best among us as Canadians, as Manitobans, as Anishinaabeg. And certainly, I think one of the things when we think about Murray Sinclair is that this man was the living embodiment of reconciliation in our country. He literally led the process that has asked Canadians to confront this dark past of residential schools, but managed to wrestle that trauma into a voice of unity and a path towards brightness in the future of this country. It's bright in the future of this country. And I think that's in large part not just the work of the survivors, but also the personality of Marie Sinclair that was able to do that. And so we're in this moment, this time, where if we have lost the personification of reconciliation,

I think each of us as Canadians is being asked to consider at this moment, how are we going to continue that project of building more respectful relationships and helping Canada, this country that we love so much, to become that beacon of light on the hill that we want it to be globally. But at the same time, this is a friend, this is a mentor, this is somebody that I've known my entire life. somebody that I've known my entire life. And I just think about his kids and his grandkids and, you know, the role of dad and husband and grandpa was so important to him that, yeah, I just feel so much compassion and sympathy for their loss. Yeah. It's both a political and a personal loss. When you say your entire life, I mean, your family's helped. Tell me about the school that your family's helped create. I mean, this was a school around reviving the Anishinaabe language and culture that your family and Murray Sinclair's family were involved in. Yeah, well, it was a preschool

actually. In the first instance, it was called Shuenim Abenochi, which means love the child in the Ojibwe language, the Anishinaabe language. And so I went to preschool with his kids. And as a result, there's that family connection, family friends becoming effectively, you know, extended kin over the course of the decades that have passed since then. And all the time we've spent together at community events and ceremonies and things like that. But I also would reflect for your audience that the fact that four decades ago in Winnipeg you had Maurice Sinclair

and his wife Catherine, not as the sole members, but as part of a community and as leaders within a community that was standing up to revitalize language and culture and to just do that work of parenting that is probably familiar to so many different communities across the country, which is to say we're part of the mainstream, but we also want to be, we also want our kids to know who they are and that they forged that path here in Manitoba. I think, you know, it gives you a little bit of a flavor of this place that we come from,

but it also gives you an insight into who Murray was and, you know, the nature of his relationship to Catherine and the nature of family being at the center of what he did that I think in some ways presages and predicts what he eventually went on to do with the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, the Pediatric Cardiac Inquest, and then ultimately the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. How do you understand, I mean, more his own personal, I mean, and that comes from family, but it also comes from a sense of what he felt he could accomplish. How do you understand what drove him to take the steps to be a leader in those various fields that you mentioned when it came to the inquiry, when it came to the TRC, when it came to being a judge, to being a senator?

Well, I think the first thing that comes to mind is I think there was a knowledge of self in Murray Sinclair. There was a quiet confidence that he knew he could do it. was a quiet confidence that he knew he could do it. And having known the man, I think he also felt the responsibility. You know, if I could, you know, just try to articulate it for you, something along the lines of, you know, he knew he could do it. And therefore, he felt a burden, a weight, a responsibility to the community and country that because he had the ability to lead in these conversations, then he should step up and do it. And I know that the TRC, the mantle of leading the TRC is something that did not come lightly to him.

But when we reflect on the nature of the change between the years that the TRC was in active operation and where we are now, where school kids across the country are wearing orange shirts, where NHL teams are doing land acknowledgements before the face-off, where so many people from so many different walks of life, from coast to coast to coast, are talking about reconciliation. We can really say that Canada has been made immeasurably better by the contributions of this person. And I think if we get beyond just that personal motivation that he had, to me, it was really love. You know, he presided over our swearing in ceremony as a government last year. And one of the really remarkable things that he told us on the way into office is he said, you have to learn to

love the people, even when they don't love you. And of course, there's a strong lesson in there about, you know, focusing on the public good, even if it's unpopular, or even in the face of opposition, you know, keep pursuing that public interest. But these past few days, having visited him in the hospital, and then now mourning his loss, I realized that what he was saying when he was saying, you have to learn to love the people even when they don't love you, is not just a lesson for politics. That was a lesson to everybody listening on a personal level, which is unconditional love. Live your life in such a way that each day you try to do your best in a kind and gentle

and magnanimous fashion. And even if those around you are not reciprocating that feeling of gentleness and compassion, you still have a responsibility and you still have to carry your life forward in such a way that you are practicing love. And if we look back over the arc of this man's life and his career, not only did he espouse those words, I believe that he also embodied them in the actions that he took. He was a great listener, and there was a weight that came with that. You talked about that weight.

I mean, in his memoir that just came out, he writes about how, he said the hardest part of all the work that he did with the TRC was that he can't stop thinking about it, that if he started crying about what he'd heard, he would have had trouble stopping. How do you understand the sacrifice that came with that work? Well, I think a lot of the sacrifice was born by his kids and grandkids and his late wife, Catherine, who, you know, had to see him on the road quite a bit and were always thinking about his well-being and encouraging him to take care of himself and are the ones who in fact did take care of him

for so many of those years. And you know once upon a time I was a journalist at the start of the TRC process, the first national event here in Winnipeg. And in those first days of those first public hearings, I actually asked him about that. I said, like, how are you going to look after yourself when you're hearing all these very, very painful, difficult stories? And he just kind of, you know, with that same matter of fact, you know, calm disposition that those of us who paid close attention to him know well after all these years. He just said, you know, it's about taking care of myself on the day-to-day level. It's about making time for the ceremonial, spiritual, emotional fulfillment needs that he has. And of course, looking after Catherine and the kids and the grandkids. And so I think that the weight of what any of us heard

through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings and the final report and the work since is profoundly sad and disturbing and challenging. But I think what Mr. Sinclair's legacy asks us to do is to reflect to the forefront of the national conversation during the TRC, which is to have a Canada where every child matters. He was, as I've said in the introduction, a senator and a judge and the leader of the TRC. He was also, as you have pointed out, a family man, that he was a father and a grandfather. And in that memoir, he tells, he had a great sense of humor. He tells a very funny story of how his granddaughter, once for Halloween, dressed up as Princess Fiona,

and demanded that he get a Shrek costume and go out for Halloween dressed up. Marie Sinclair going out for Halloween dressed up as Shrek. How will you remember Marie Sinclair as a person? Well, I think that sense of humor really comes to the fore, you know. So I can tell you that I visited him a few times in hospital these past few weeks. And on one of the occasions, he was, you know, taking a sip of something or what have you, and a bit of it, you know, dribbled onto his chin. So I wiped it off.

I just leaned in for a quick second. And then, you know, he got this contemplative look in his eye, and he sort of looked off into the distance. And I thought he was going to hit me with something really profound, some great wisdom. He said, you know what I'm having a really tough time accepting is that the premier just wiped my chin. So you have even in these great, you know, moments of, you know, perspicacity and insight and reflection. He always had that sense of humor. He always had that mischievous grin on his face when he knew he was about to say something funny to make the whole room laugh. And, you know, apart from the great works and apart from the wonderful contributions to the public discourse, I'll always remember the laugh that we shared together because

of his great sense of humor. It's really good of you to do this. I appreciate it. Premier, thank you very much. Thanks for honoring him. Wab Kanu is the Premier of Manitoba. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs.

We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Cindy Blackstock has spent years advocating for Indigenous children in this country,

often side by side with Marie Sinclair. Cindy is executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. Cindy, good morning to you. Good morning. I'm sorry for your loss. Yeah, and as Wab said, it's a loss for all of us, but it's also a reminder of the great blessing and great lessons that he left us. What are you thinking about this morning,

and in the last days and couple of days, as you have been thinking about Marie Sinclair? What's been going through your mind? Well, one of the most important lessons and legacies he left was his own family, who were just incredible children. His wife, Catherine, so loving and giving. And he also helped us reimagine our own families, what was possible in our own families to embrace some of those dark chapters that have been passed along through the generations in each of our stories and to address those, to stop for a minute, to look at them, to learn from them and to pass something better on to future generations. And he did that for the country too. He was a person who the family was really at the epicenter, but not just the people who were here. Murray always was focused on making sure that each of

us remembered our duty to fall in love with a generation that we will never know, to be mindful of those who are yet to come, and to make our decisions carefully, so that one day when they're here and we're gone into the world of the ancestors, that we can be proud of the legacy we left for them. And the most important one is that legacy of loving justice. When you would seek him out, maybe you were grappling with a really difficult problem. Maybe you were trying to work through something,

rationalize something, understand something. What was it that would draw you to him? Why was he somebody that you would connect with? Well, you're right to say I'd often seek him out because I just thought he was a person who could see through the kind of unimportant, you know, like I was once taught that in doing what's urgent, you miss what's important. And because Murray was such a great listener and had such a grounded cultural and also just brilliant mind, he would get to the essence of what the real issue is. And sometimes I found myself getting caught up in the urgent and missing what was important, and he would help me get there and see what the issue was and move forward. In his memoir, he tells a story of how when he was

a young judge in Manitoba, he encountered in an alley behind his office, a teenager who tried to mug him. And this is a young man that he recognized from the courtroom. He was in foster care. He was being bullied at school. And he talked to this young man and gave him money for food and told him to go back to school and call him for help if he needed it. And one of the things that he said in telling that story was that he told the story because he believed that that young man could have been him. What does that story tell you about who Murray Sinclair was, who he became in the wake of that encounter? He always saw the potential for better in people. And he always knew that although people may act out in ways of pain and in anger, that was always a symptom of a lack of love.

And to think about those moments when we are most in need, and when we're feeling all those big emotions, that anger, that fear, the frustration, and feeling alone. When someone reaches out in love, it can truly be a turning point and that was the magic of murray he was able to overcome those kind of reflex or emotions so many of us would have had in that situation and that dark alley with that young man which is to run or or to you know maybe resist in some other way instead of resisting he was giving And he did that for the country too. Did you ever sense anger or frustration from him as he tried to push people toward understanding uncomfortable truths

and take action in the light of those uncomfortable truths to make a better country? Did you ever sense that he was frustrated in that work? I think he was disappointed. You know, like I think about the 30th anniversary of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry. Had those great recommendations been put in place, many of the current challenges, for example, in child and family services, the over-representation may have been addressed early on, 30 years ago. But his disappointment, in my view, wasn't necessarily

with individuals. His disappointment was that the institutions were not moving fast enough, so that we had gotten to a place where we could capture the hearts of people through the TRC or through the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry. But what was necessary now is to get those hearts in a way that they could change the institutions, because it was the institutions that we had built since Confederation that were really perpetrating these systemic harms. And I think that that's the challenge all the rest of us need to build on his example to be able to do. Just in the last minute or so that we have, I mean, I'll ask you the same question that I asked

the Premier, which is, we talk about him in these various roles, but as a person, how will you remember Murray Sinclair? I think that word that comes to me is just that loving justice. I feel like Murray held a flashlight and he'd walk into dark spaces and he'd cast a beam of light that would enable the rest of us to safely follow. that beam of light endures. And the best memory that we can give and best honoring we can give to someone as incredible as Murray Sinclair and his beautiful family is to actually pull out your copy

of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action and get to work. I'm always glad to talk to you. Cindy, thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me. Cindy Blackstock is Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. She is in Kamloops, British Columbia. Near the end of his life, he shared his thoughts and personal stories in a memoir.

It was published this fall called Who We Are, Four Questions for a Life and a Nation. And we'll leave you today with the voice of Murray Sinclair. This is Murray Sinclair reading a story about his family from that memoir. My Auntie Louise told me the story of how my parents met. My mother Florence was from Fisher River. She was sent to the hospital in the St. Peter's area, then called the Denver Indian Hospital because she had tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was usually a fatal illness, and they didn't really treat it. They just let you find your own way through. Auntie Louise worked at the Denver Hospital as a nurse's aide. She saw this lonely young girl,

often sitting in a chair in the yard, and noticed that nobody came to visit her. The girl looked so lonely that Auntie Louise started to bring her home over the weekend. The family house was only about 400 yards from the hospital. When Auntie Louise returned to work on Monday, she would take my mother, Florence, back to the hospital. My father's family had enfranchised so that they could remove their children from residential school. Enfranchisement meant that they gave up their Indian status under the Indian Act. But because the priest kept hassling my grandparents to send the children back, the boys signed up for the army.

Uncle Malford was first because he was the oldest. Then Uncle Elmer, and then my dad, Henry who was about 16 Charlie tried to sign up as well but he was too young, he was only 14 It was on one of my father's off-duty visits home that he met my mother He said that she was so beautiful

that he fell in love with her from the moment he saw her. But he was nervous and he didn't know how to talk to her. He got Louise to act as an interpreter. Louise let my mom know that he liked her and told my dad that Florence liked him too. When my dad was deployed to go overseas, he told my mother that he would come see her when he got back, that he wanted to talk to her about getting married. They couldn't marry before he left because he was not yet of legal age. Eventually, all the brothers were deployed to Europe on various missions. all the brothers were deployed to Europe on various missions. My dad was deployed to a mission,

a battle, in northern France in late 1944. Many men were killed in that battle, and a bomb landed very close to him, and he was badly injured. He was initially believed to be dead. He was left on the field. But then, as often happens, the Army medical team went in to look for any survivors, and they found my dad. He was taken to a hospital in France and then transported to a hospital in England. The message that came back to the family was, Your son is in the hospital here. He's not likely to make it. We'll take care of him until he passes. My grandparents were prepared for him to leave this world. My mother cried and cried and cried for days, but he recovered. Suddenly, he got better. He was back on his feet, and within a short time,

he was deployed back to Canada, to Montreal, where they put him on a train. That train brought him to Winnipeg, and in Winnipeg, he boarded another to Selkirk, where the family met him at the train station. Years later, my mother's matron of honor told me that she was there when my mother and my grandmother saw my dad step down off that train. She said that they immediately ran towards him and that because she was younger and faster, my mother got there ahead of Granny,

but she stopped. And she reached back and helped my grandmother get to my dad so that they could hug first. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.