‘A story worth finding’ Decision to reclaim Indigenous heritage a pivotal moment in shaping the identity of Manitoba’s first Aboriginal judge By: Murray Sinclair Posted: 5:11 PM CDT Thursday, Sep. 12, 2024

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This article was published 12/09/2024 (361 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Selected excerpts from Who We Are: Four Questions for a Life and a Nation, by Hon. Murray Sinclair (Penguin Random House). A special book launch is scheduled for Sept. 26 at the RBC Convention Centre, just days before the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Sinclair has had a long and distinguished career of public service. Nine years after graduating from law school in 1979, Sinclair was appointed associate chief judge, becoming Manitoba’s first Aboriginal judge.

A short time later, he co-chaired Manitoba’s Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, which explored the relationship between the province’s Indigenous community and justice system.

“To this day, I still think about all the painful stories together. These stories and voices become a part of you.”–Murray Sinclair, in Who We Are

The AJI’s findings, which determined Manitoba’s criminal justice system was beset with systemic racism, continue to reverberate today.

In 1994, Sinclair led the Pediatric Cardiac Surgery Inquest that reviewed the deaths of 14 children at Health Sciences Centre. He remains haunted by those who died and continues to possess a bookmark listing their names.

In 2009, he began a six-year journey as chair of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that explored the devastating impact of the residential school system on Indigenous peoples. That work resulted in 94 calls to action.

He later served in the Canadian Senate.

His Spirit Name is Mizhana Gheezhik (The One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky).

The chosen excerpts are from each of the book’s four sections.

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WHERE DO I COME FROM?

In 1968, I was selected to go on an International Air Cadet exchange program to England. Each of us were billeted with local families. I stayed with a Welsh family whose father’s name was David Easthope. Easthope was a proud Welshman whose country had struggled for a long time against colonial invasion by England, and he was really interested in having conversations with me when he found out that I was Indigenous from Canada.

He asked me questions about what nation I was from, how I say things in my traditional language, and what were the things Indigenous peoples were up to in Canada to ensure our ways would not be forgotten. I recall being very embarrassed that I had nothing to say. The truth was: I didn’t really know.

This was when I realized that I had been totally immersed in mainstream Canada. Like many Indigenous people of my generation — particularly in an urban context — I was raised in the belief that we were not Indigenous, that there were no longer any Indigenous peoples, and there was no point in looking. This was incredibly ironic, because in my family and community most were Indigenous people, yet we all were told to see ourselves as Canadians, a part of Canada, and therefore a part of the British Empire. This was more than just standing daily for God Save the Queen in schools and workplaces; this was something drilled into me as a life principle. While I did have some knowledge of things from listening to conversations among family members, really our conversations didn’t include much about our family history beyond two or three generations back and certainly didn’t entail our history as a people and nation. Or, if my family knew this information, they weren’t sharing it.

All I could tell David Easthope about was what it was like being a Canadian. In this village in England where I was living for a week, we talked every night. And every night, the one thing I remember him saying to me was: it’s very important for Welsh to maintain our sense of identity and a sense of where we come from because the English never conquered us. No matter how much they invaded us, he would tell me, our people never agreed to give up our identity. Then, he said something to me I’ll never forget.

“When you go home, you should see what you can find out about your people. See what you can find out about your ancestors; where people came from, what they stand for, and what they stood for. You’ll find a story worth finding.” This sounded important, I thought, and like something I should do. I didn’t know at that time where that journey was going to lead me, but I knew I wanted to know a few things….

I developed a hunger and a thirst after that summer in England to learn more about being Indigenous and what it meant, and what it was that I had been missing. Inside me awakened a desire to learn as much as I could, to be proud, and to answer the questions burning inside of me.

WHERE AM I GOING?

I graduated from law school in 1979.

And after graduating, I articled with Walker Cristall and Pandya, which had a law firm in Selkirk. And while articling with them, I had my very first racist experience in court.

My job as an articling student was basically to do anything the lawyers in the firm needed to have done. I would do research at the library, or help to develop briefs, or research cases, provide case synopses, things like that. It was very oriented towards doing research.

But the one thing I persuaded them to let me do were a few court appearances, to learn about being in court. I would go with the lawyers and I would observe their trials, and I would assist them with the work, in whatever ways they would allow. And they learned to trust me. So they started to let me do court appearances.

And, during this period while I was appearing in court frequently, the members of my family, not just my immediate family, but also my aunties and uncles, had taken notice that I wasn’t particularly well-dressed. In other words, I didn’t look like a lawyer. So the aunties got together, and they bought me a suit. And they bought me a new pair of shoes. And they bought me a briefcase. And they said that I should wear all of it when I went to court. So that I looked like a lawyer.

One day, I got a call about 5:30 or six o’clock in the morning from one of the lawyers in the firm who said, “We have a client who’s on remand, and he’s appearing in court in Pine Falls today. And he can’t be there, and I can’t go. I’d like you to go to court, and I’d like you to get a remand.” So I said, “I can do that.”

And I got up, and I put on my brand-new suit, and I put on my brand-new shoes, and I got my brand-new briefcase. I didn’t have anything in the briefcase, I was just carrying it, because I’d been told I’d look like lawyer if I carried one. So I was really dressed to the nines, to be a lawyer that day. And I jumped in the car and off I went, driving up to Pine Falls, about an hour away from where we lived.

So I got to the community. And I could tell that people were noticing me. Indigenous guy, long hair, wearing a suit. I strolled into the courtroom. In most communities when court is in session, it’s not just the people who are charged and their families who are there; members of the community come around to see what’s going on and laugh at people who are on the docket. Make fun of people who are being charged. So it’s a bit of a community event, a little bit like a comedy club.

So I’m standing at the back watching and I come to understand that all I’ll have to say is, “I need a remand because the lawyer who’s supposed to be here is tied up in other matters, and he’s going to appear next time and set a date.”

When they called my client’s name, I stood up. And I started walking forward. And because I had these brand-new shoes on, they made a very big clomping sound as I walked through this community hall. Everybody turned to look at me, and I thought, Wow, they’re all watching me. This is great. They’re seeing an Indigenous lawyer, probably for the first time in their lives, appearing in court to represent one of their own. And so they watch me clomp, clomp, clomp all the way up to the front. The judge was busy writing things down, so I took my empty briefcase and I put it on the table. And I just stood there because I knew not to interrupt him. And then he finished and he looked up at me.

He asked, “So what’s this about?”

And I said, “Well, Fontaine, sir. You called Fontaine.”

And he looked at the paper again. And he said, “OK, Fontaine. So what are you charged with today, Fontaine?”

And I thought, holy cow, he’s just called me the accused. And then I heard the laughter start in the back of the room. From the people I’d originally thought were filled with immense pride. The laughter started at the back. And by the time five or 10 seconds had passed, the room was in full-blown laughing mode, laughing at me, maybe laughing at the judge too, but laughing at this whole incident, in which I had so proudly shown that I was an Indigenous lawyer. All that was truly shown was the judge’s mistaken impression that I was the accused.

WHY AM I HERE?

I didn’t reflect on my own experience of witnessing and transformation until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was all finished. Occasionally, during the TRC process, I would think about what a great experience it was to be involved. I really believed that the TRC was going to change the country.

But I do remember a survivors’ gathering, or an Elders’ gathering, at which I was asked, just, “How are you doing?” I do remember being very emotional and saying, “The hard part about all of this is that I can’t stop thinking about it.” I said, “My concern is that if I start crying about what I’ve heard, I’ll never stop.”

To this day, I still think about all the painful stories together. These stories and voices become a part of you. And I think about how mean the government representatives had to have been to justify what they did. And I don’t get angry. I become very, very sad. But I did not cry.

I believed then, and I still believe today, that if I ever start crying about what I’ve heard, then I’m going to have trouble stopping. When I try to put a face to everybody, I have difficulty doing that. I can’t. But I remember groups of people. Men, women, Elders, elderly women, elderly men. The Inuit people, the Métis people. The things that were unique to each school. When I think about what I’ve heard, it’s almost like it becomes an amalgam of it all. And then the magnitude of it becomes overwhelming.

I call up a handful of survivors all the time just to check how they’re doing. Of course, they’re still feeling the effects of their residential school experience. Most people will never read the report. I know that.

And I struggle with the best way to bring survivors’ voices into this book. I don’t know how to do it. It’s not that I don’t know how to start doing it. It’s that I don’t think I can figure out how to stop.

So my view and my comment is that being in charge of the TRC and being involved in all of those hearings, and listening to all those survivors, profoundly changed my way of thinking about the government, thinking about Canadian society, and thinking about how far we have to go in order to restore Indigenous peoples’ self-respect. Because we will never achieve reconciliation without self-respect.

Reconciliation is about mutual respect.

The history of the oppression of Indigenous peoples has given rise to a significant amount of resentment amongst our people for the way they have been treated. And coming out of that, I see a sensitivity about challenges that emerges from these historical, though ongoing, oppressions.

Although not always expressed in these words, Indigenous people and nations are often confronted with this question: “Why don’t you get over it?” Which could be an intellectually valid question to ask, but is not often asked in an intellectually valid way.

It’s asked in a way which makes a declaration: “You’re wrong, we’re right, and we were right because we are now in control.” So, in that sense, it’s the way that the question is expressed that often becomes the issue. At the same time, if it is an intellectual conversation that people want to have, there is a way to respond, and there is a conversation you can and should have about it. I think that we also need to understand that we are not yet ready to have that conversation on an intellectual level.

The conversation right now is between people who are feeling the hurt and damage of the past and those who don’t understand that hurt or damage. When it comes to the whole process of reconciliation, as I wrote earlier, you cannot have a relationship of mutual respect until Indigenous people are given the opportunity to develop their own sense of self-respect. My view is that any work that institutions do in the area of contributing to that relationship and mutual respect should also include an aspect of adding to the knowledge base that would give Indigenous youth and Indigenous people and Canadian society an awareness of who Indigenous people are, what Indigenous people stand for, what they believe in, and what they practise and live.

Failing to do that is to create an artificial relationship.

“A nation-to-nation relationship is about two equals sitting at the same table, talking to each other about issues of commonality that might affect their relationship.”–Murray Sinclair

It’s like marrying somebody you just met and assuming that you will have a good relationship going forward. You need to have some understanding, at least in general terms, of where you each come from, and we don’t have that here.

That’s why it’s so intellectually easy for the prime minister to say, “I support the nation-to-nation relationship.” But when you ask what that really means, he is thinking in terms of better programs for Indigenous people. That’s not what a nation-to-nation relationship is about. A nation-to-nation relationship is about two equals sitting at the same table, talking to each other about issues of commonality that might affect their relationship. So, again, I go back to the marital analogy. When you’re not married and you’re relating to somebody, it’s different than when you have committed to a lifetime together. Getting married is a process of reconciliation. People don’t see it that way, but it is. It’s a process of reconciliation because you’re giving up your sovereignty to have that relationship together.

We’ve made that commitment through the treaty process. We haven’t completed the process, but the process of reconciliation was started at that time. People think that reconciliation is some time in the future, and I say reconciliation is in the past….

I get requests constantly, by the hundreds, in fact, from organizations and individuals and institutions like schools and universities to come and talk to their students, talk to their members, talk to their board or to their employees, about the work of the TRC. I often say, there are others who can do that work. And if you just want to inform yourself about what is in the report, then it’s easy enough to read it.

There is the major report itself. And there’s a summary report. And there’s also a shortened summary report, one hundred pages long, that was written by an Indigenous historian, as well. Even if you just read that, it’s a good starting point.

“What is your reconciliation action plan?”–Murray Sinclair

The real question for these organizations is, “What is your reconciliation action plan?” So I tell people, “If you want me to comment upon your reconciliation action plan, please tell me what it is.” And most of the time, they cannot. Or sometimes their reconciliation action plan is vague. “We’re going to talk better, learn to talk to Indigenous communities better, learn to talk to our Indigenous employees better.” To that I say: You should have been doing that to begin with. So, that’s not a new activity. What are you going to do to make changes for the future? And I reckon most parties, including the government candidates, don’t have a good long-term reconciliation action plan. They’re very ad hoc in their work.

There are a few exceptions worth mentioning. The organizations that have sprung up since the TRC, the organizations that have embraced the TRC as a foundation for their path going forward. Those that see the TRC report as the vehicle by which they can enliven their own work….

When the TRC report was released I was almost 70 years old, and I said, “Reconciliation will not happen in my lifetime.” And what I meant by that, of course, was that reconciliation is going to take some time to achieve. And the chances of my being alive for much of this future development was not good. But I didn’t want my passing, didn’t want my death to be an excuse not to do anything.

Those who want to know more do.

I can’t tell you what history is going to say about the commission and the work that I did, and the work that we did. I do know that it was significant, it was positive, it brought to light things that needed to be brought to light.

WHO AM I?

I would tell (my grandchildren) my favourite story from my childhood — the story of the Ugly Duckling. When I told (granddaughter) Sarah that story, I would say that she, too, is a beautiful swan no matter what others might tell her, and it made her feel good to hear that from her mooshim.

But what I didn’t tell her then — even though she learned about this in other ways — is that I was raised to believe I was an ugly duckling, and despite my significant duck skills, I always felt shame and confusion and sadness because I did not feel like a duck. Years ago, I promised myself that when she was old enough to understand, I would tell her about the day I became a swan — when I realized that I was a strong Anishinaabe man and that there were many things of beauty about being Anishinaabe that belong to me.

One of my favourite recollections with Sarah was Halloweening. She’d like to dress up and go out on Halloween. And she would make me dress up, too, to take her out for Halloween. I was a bumblebee one year; I was a clown the next year. And then one time, she asked me to go as Shrek. And she was going as Princess Fiona. So I had to dress up as Shrek. I went to the costume store, and I got a Shrek costume, and I wore it.

We started at the beginning of the block, walking down the street collecting candy. And next thing we knew, a number of kids had joined us and walked along with us. And by the time we got close to the end of the street, we had about 30 kids following like a train behind me. And I was the only adult, so I was leading the way. And I’d stand on the sidewalk while they went to the house and got their treats. There was one house, I could hear the lady at the door saying, “Oh, look at you. Oh, you beautiful children.” She said, “Here’s one for the football player. Here’s one for the princess. Here’s something for this frog, and here’s one for the dog, and here’s one for the kitty cat.”

And then she looked out at the sidewalk, and she saw me there dressed up in my Shrek costume. And she said, “Who’s that out there? That looks like Shrek.”

And Sarah said, “Well, that’s my mooshim dressed up like Shrek.” And the lady said, “Well, what’s a mushoom?” And Sarah said, “Well, that’s kind of like a grandpa, but only better.”