Murray Sinclair, former senator who led Truth and Reconciliation Commission, dead at 73

Murray Sinclair, the Anishinaabe senator and renowned Manitoba lawyer who led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has died at age 73.

Sinclair died at a Winnipeg hospital early Monday morning "peacefully and surrounded by love," his family said in a statement.

"The impact of our dad's work reached far across the country and the world," the statement said. "From residential school survivors to law students to those who sat across from him in a courtroom, he was always known as an exceptional listener who treated everyone with dignity and respect.

"We know that stories of his kindness, generosity and fairness will circulate for generations to come."

Sinclair, whose spirit name was Mazina Giizhik (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky), was born on Jan. 24, 1951, just north of Selkirk on what used to be the St. Peter's reserve.

A member of the Peguis First Nation, he was raised by his Cree grandfather Jim Sinclair and his Ojibway grandmother Catherine Sinclair after his mother died of a stroke. Both of his grandparents were required to go to the residential school system.

Sinclair told the Gladue Community Justice Forum in 2021 that the first language he spoke at home was Cree. Just before starting school, he said, his grandmother told him he would have to stop speaking the language both inside and outside the home.

"I grew up in a family and during a time in which we were raised to deny our Aboriginality, our identity as Aboriginal people," he said.

"We were raised, in fact, to believe that nothing that our culture offered us or our people, offered us as a people, had any merit anymore. We were raised to believe, in fact, that it was our obligation, in fact it was our responsibility, it was our problem, to overcome our Indianness."

Sinclair was a strong student and skipped two grades on his way to graduating from Selkirk Collegiate, a public high school, as valedictorian and athlete of the year in 1968. He attended the University of Manitoba for two years but postponed his studies to help care for his ailing grandmother.

Once back home, Sinclair started working with the Selkirk Friendship Centre, helping to provide services to First Nations people living off-reserve. By 1971, he'd become regional vice-president of the Manitoba Métis Federation. 

Sinclair said in 2021 his work in Selkirk drove him to help Indigenous people who were being treated unfairly under the law and overrepresented in the justice system.

"I knew that the way things were, were not the way things should be," he said.

Returning to his studies in 1976, Sinclair attended the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba and again distinguished himself academically by winning the A.J. Christie Prize in civil litigation. He graduated in 1979 and was called to the bar in 1980.