Justice Sinclair receives Honourary Doctorate of Laws from York University

By Barb Nahwegahbow

TORONTO –“I cannot think of a worthier individual to honour at this time, in this place than Justice Murray Sinclair,” said Lorne Sossin, Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School. “Justice Sinclair has become the standard bearer for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Canada from his role as the Commissioner for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for Indian Residential Schools,” Sossin said.

On June 19, in front of an audience of about 2,000 people and over 300 students being convocated, Sinclair received an Honourary Doctorate of Laws from York University Chancellor Gregory Sorbara at Osgoode Convocation. Earlier, in his address, Sorbara told the audience that the TRC report discusses, “a very long and dark period of Canadian history” and told the audience it was, “required reading for all of us, particularly for those who have the law in their hands from now on.”

For the past six years, Sinclair has chaired the TRC and has travelled across the country hearing testimony from thousands of Residential School survivors. In Ottawa on June 2, the TRC released its Summary Report containing findings and calls to action.

After receiving his honourary degree, Sinclair was proud, humble and direct as he gave a 20-minute lesson in the law, education and Aboriginal people to the graduating students of Osgoode Hall Law School.

“The law has not been a friend to Indian people or Metis people or the Inuit,” he told the students.

The plan of the federal government was to use law as a weapon against the original peoples of this land, Sinclair said,“…to use law to eliminate cultures, to eliminate languages, to eliminate the uniqueness and identity of Aboriginal peoples and to be used to take children away from very capable and loving parents. Law was used to prevent resistance, to prevent protest and legal challenge.”

First Nations people could not sue the government, he said, unless they got permission from the government first, “and we have not been able to find any record of the government giving permission to be sued”, Sinclair said.

Not only were the traditional ceremonies outlawed, Sinclair told the audience, but Indians were legally prohibited from, “dressing up as Indians in their traditional clothing.”

Sinclair talked about the importance of education and its role in nation-building. He said for thousands of years, the original peoples of Canada had demonstrated their competence in educating their children in order to maintain their sense nationhood. These ways were deemed inferior and in fact, Indigenous people were deemed inferior, he said.

A report by Egerton Ryerson in the 1850’s in what was then Upper Canada proposed that public education be provided to all children of the colonies with the exception of Indian children who, because they were intellectually and socially inferior needed to be educated in industrial training schools. This thinking, said Sinclair, was further supported by a report commissioned by the government in 1879. This led to the Indian Residential School system, the wholesale removal of thousands of children from loving families, and what both York University’s Chancellor and Osgoode’s Dean called this country’s “dark past”.

“If you were there in the face of such injustice by your own government,” Sinclair asked the graduates, “what would you have done? If you saw it today, or see it in the future, what will you do?…To work in the field of law often takes courage because law is the only vehicle we have to achieve and maintain justice…I ask you all to show such courage when it is needed.”