Background Content

Government Commitments to Truth and Reconciliation

Sinclair leaves a strong legacy

November 5, 2024

NationTalk: The Brandon SUN – OPINION

“How can we as citizens put faith in a man who shows such disregard for his mandate and the society that educated him?” 

— Winnipeg Police Service Staff Sgt. George Walker, 1989

In 1989, a Winnipeg police sergeant wrote then-Manitoba premier Gary Filmon to demand the removal of one of two judges on the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba.

Truth and Reconciliation commissioners Justice Murray Sinclair and Marie Wilson are recognized in the visitors' gallery in the House of Commons in Ottawa on June 2, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Truth and Reconciliation commissioners Justice Murray Sinclair and Marie Wilson are recognized in the visitors’ gallery in the House of Commons in Ottawa on June 2, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

The inquiry had been struck following complaints from Indigenous leaders that police handling of the police shooting death of Indigenous leader John Joseph Harper and the 1971 murder of Helen Betty Osborne were mishandled.

There were two commissioners overseeing the inquiry, including Brandon-based Justice Al Hamilton, and Judge Murray Sinclair — then the province’s only Indigenous justice.

The inquiry, which investigated both the Harper and Osborne cases, had a broad mandate, and heard the views of hundreds of people on how the justice system had been treating Manitoba’s Indigenous population. Many of those interviewed had accused the police and courts of racist behaviour.

There were several shocking developments that came out of that inquiry, including the suicide of Winnipeg police inspector Ken Dowson, who shot himself hours before he was to testify before the justices. It was Dowson who had headed an internal police investigation into the shooting of J.J. Harper, and as The Canadian Press wrote in September 1989, his suicide “sent shock waves through the department and left many officers bitter and angry about the inquiry.”

Staff Sgt. George Walker, who had sent the letter to Filmon, had demanded that then-Judge Sinclair be removed from the inquiry because he believed that Sinclair was biased against non-Indigenous people.

Shortly before, Sinclair had been quoted by media as saying that Indigenous people’s problems stemmed in part from poverty and from the shock of two cultures clashing. And further, that the education system ignores the history of Indigenous people.

“This indicates to me he is suspicious of everyone by the aboriginal people,” Walker wrote.

But the officer’s accusation betrayed a not-so-subtle conviction that Manitoba’s only Indigenous judge should have been more deferential to the police and their actions and explanations, rather than adhering to his obligation to the truth, wherever it took him.

The staff sergeant’s actions were denounced by then Winnipeg police chief Herb Stephen, who said that Walker was not authorized to be making those comments and that he was subject to internal discipline.

It was just this kind of reaction that Justice Sinclair had seemingly expected when he decided to accept an appointment to the inquiry. As the Globe and Mail reported yesterday, Justice Sinclair only agreed to do it on the condition that a non-Indigenous judge preside alongside him “to maintain the inquiry’s credibility with the white population.”

Not only did he get accused of bias by police, Sinclair’s presence on the inquiry prompted a death threat against him. Sinclair told the CBC in 2021 that the level of hate that emerged during the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry was so great, it had reminded him of the Ku Klux Klan.

“An RCMP officer came to my house and said, ‘We have information that a City of Winnipeg police officer’s threatened to kill you,” he told the CBC upon the 30th anniversary of the final report. “For a period of weeks, we had RCMP officers watching our house and making sure that nothing happened, and they would accompany me when I would go anywhere in the public.”

Yet in spite of the threat, the two commissioners persisted. It would ultimately take three years for the inquiry to gather necessary evidence and to write the report on the deaths of Harper and Osborne. When it was finally released in 1991, it included 296 recommendations that touched on everything from Indigenous rights to needed reforms of the justice system.

So many of those recommendations ended up on a dusty shelf, unfulfilled by the province that had demanded the inquiry in the first place.

But these same issues came back to the fore when Sinclair released his findings coming out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to bear witness to the difficult and often horrific experiences of Indigenous people within Canada’s Indian Residential School system.

Thankfully these findings, while controversial, have not ended up in the dust bin of history. The 94 calls to action, some of which are still in the implementation phase by the federal government, have already had a strong and — we believe — lasting impact upon relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in this country.

While true reconciliation will take generations to manage and attain, Murray Sinclair lived long enough to see some of the fruits of his labour. Here in Brandon, non-Indigenous participation in Truth and Reconciliation Day continues to grow. And across the nation, while there remain those who deny the experiences of Indigenous people at residential schools, those voices are loud but few — and diminishing.

Former attorney, judge and senator Murray Sinclair passed away at the age of 73 this week. But his impact on Canada and the lives of Indigenous people in this land will remain. There are times the word “giant” just seems too small for a man with a legacy so strong.

» Matt Goerzen, editor