Verdicts tested educator’s hopes for reconciliation

Educators committed to teaching reconciliation are among the great hopes for the future of IndigenousCanadian relations, a prominent Anishinaabe academic writer says.

The not guilty verdicts in the trials of two white men accused of murdering two young Indigenous people in Saskatchewan and Manitoba caused many people who work on reconciliation to question the value of their work, Niigaan Sinclair said in an interview in Saskatoon Monday.

Sinclair said he was shaken when Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley was acquitted in the shooting death of Colten Boushie in February, telling a CBC interviewer at the time,“I’ve lost hope in a country that doesn’t want to change.” “I was angry.”

Just two weeks later, he was in a Winnipeg courtroom with the family of teenager Tina Fontaine, when Raymond Cormier was found not guilty of her murder. Sinclair said the two verdicts caused him to feel despair, even as young people looked to him for leadership.

Sinclair is the graduate program chair in the department of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba and a writer who also travels the country, teaching school administrators and teachers how to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) calls to action. He worked Monday with schools of the Saskatoon Tribal Council First Nations and their partners in the public and Catholic school systems.

“For me, reconciliation looks very different than it did a few weeks ago. Canada is not in the era of reconciliation,” he said.

Sinclair said he sought the advice of his father, Sen. Murray Sinclair, who was the lead commissioner of the 2009-2015 TRC. “My dad said our teachings have told us we have to keep going. We have to keep doing this work,” he said.

The work isn’t about convincing others to be kind to you, it’s about being kind yourself, proud, true to your values as custodians of Mother Earth and seeking to be in good relationships with others, “even if that means sometimes you’re met with violence,” he said.

Educators are a hope for the future because they can change the negative relationships that existed between schools and Indigenous people and change the relationships of the future, he said.

Teachers and administrators can start by implementing just one call to action in the classrooms and throughout the school. It means examining which people are held up as heroes, what messages are being sent to children in classroom work and the very culture of the school itself, he said.

Sinclair sees the calls to action being implemented in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario more than anywhere else in Canada.

“We have a lot of potential because of the people in this room who are doing the work. The fact they are committed to it should give this country hope,” he said.

My dad said our teachings have told us we have to keep going. We have to keep doing this work.