General
Murray Sinclair, Who Reframed Indigenous Relations in Canada, Dies at 73
He headed a commission that documented widespread abuse in Canada’s boarding schools for Indigenous children and sought to correct the history of Indigenous people.
Murray Sinclair, whose leadership of a truth and reconciliation commission documented the horrors that took place in Canada’s former school system for Indigenous children, and whose activism shaped the national conversation on the treatment of Indigenous people in the country, died on Nov. 4. He was 73.
His death, at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, Manitoba, was confirmed by his family. A spokeswoman for the family said he’d had a long illness. His hospitalization had prevented him from attending book launch events for his memoir, “Who We Are,” which was published in September.
Mr. Sinclair, whose Anishinaabe name was Mazina Giizhik, championed Indigenous peoples’ rights as the first Indigenous person to become a judge in his home province of Manitoba, and later, when he was appointed to Canada’s Senate. But it was his work as the lead commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada from 2009-15 that brought him to national prominence.
Over six years, the commission listened to harrowing testimony from more than 6,500 students who attended Canada’s residential schools for Indigenous children, leading it to declare the school system a form of “cultural genocide.” The schools banned Indigenous languages and spiritual practices, sometimes violently, through corporal punishment. The commission found that more than 3,200 students had died of malnutrition, abuse and neglect, or because of accidents and fires; further research revealed that the tally may ultimately exceed 10,000, Mr. Sinclair told The New York Times in 2021.
The commission had been established in 2008 as part of the settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by former students over their treatment at the schools, which had largely been operated by the Roman Catholic Church, on behalf of the government, for more than a century; the last one closed in 1996. The commission’s goal was to document the largely compulsory system’s history and make recommendations on how Canadians could reconcile with Indigenous people.
But its leaders had quarreled over how to achieve its mission until Mr. Sinclair was brought in to replace them.