Canadian church fires linked to indigenous mass graves scandal – media
RTJan 09, 2024
Murray Sinclair, Manatoba's first Indigenous judge and former senator who led Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), passed away at 73 on Monday.
During his time leading the TRC, Sinclair estimated that over 4.1K — and possibly up to 15K — Indigenous children died due to neglect in the country's residential school system. He called it a "cultural genocide."
Sinclair was born on a reservation and raised by his grandparents, both of whom were forced into government-funded residential schools, which were created to assimilate Indigenous children into non-Indigenous society.
Sinclair was a leader for all Canadians, which is why he not only sought to shine a light on injustice but worked to bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians together to reconcile the past. While the country still mourns the past, and not all of the TRC Calls to Action have been implemented, Sinclair's memory will inspire the country to finish his job after he's gone. Murray's passing should motivate the country toward more social justice.
While he may have tried to pursue truth and reconciliation, much of Murray Sinclair's work was neither truthful nor pacifying. Sinclair exaggerated the number of children sent to residential schools and their negative educational and social impacts on Indigenous families. When you couple this with the residential school mass grave hoax, this so-called reconciliation movement has only torn Canadians apart and set Indigenous communities back.