Sinclair shares with students
Senator Murray Sinclair spoke to students, staff, and community members via video on Tuesday night in the second talk of Bishop’s University’s Donald Lecture Series for 2017-18. Sinclair, the Chief Commissioner of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Canada’s first judge of indigenous origins, was meant to be a part of the 2016-17 series but had to reschedule for personal reasons.
Over the course of an hour and a half Sinclair reflected on the challenges facing indigenous peoples in Canada today and the role non indigenous people have to play in reconciliation efforts. He spoke both from his own personal history and experience and from broader knowledge he has gained about the situation of indigenous peoples in Canada over the years.
“I wanted to understand why things are the way they are,” Sinclair said of his reasoning for going to law school many years ago. He spoke of a growing understanding throughout his life of the ways that laws and society treat native peoples differently, and pointed out that Canada is still living the lasting impacts of the residential school system.
Despite the serious societal issues and injustices taking place, including the fact that there are more indigenous children in child services across the country now than there were at the height of the residential school system, Sinclair expressed a consistent sense that Canada is working toward improving the relationship between indigenous and nonindigenous people.
“The key to reconciliation when it comes to education is really to teach children from their earliest years about respect to the extent that they are capable of understanding about who each other is, about the territory on which they live, and about the people who are a part of that territory,” the senator said, arguing that when children grow up with that knowledge and an understanding of Canadian history in a way that recognizes the role that indigenous people continue to have today, then they will be able to live lives that are more open to repairing relationships with aboriginal communities.
“Those who continue to live in indigenous communities continue to face some of the greatest challenges we have in this country,” Sinclair noted.