Lack of action on TRCs calls To action frustrating says professor and author Niigaan Sinclair

Ten years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its final report, the inaction on the 94 calls to action is “pretty frustrating,” says Niigaan Sinclair. Sinclair says his father, the late, former TRC commissioner and Sen. Murray Sinclair, felt the same way prior to his passing in November 2024. “About 14 of the 94 calls have been finished, whether we agree they’re finished or not, that’s generally what they’re thought to be is completed,” says Sinclair on the latest episode of Face to Face. “Forty have been underway or some progress has been made but they certainly have been stalled recently, very little action has been done by this most recent federal government. And then 40, nothing has ever been done. “So, it’s very frustrating and I think that many of us feel that there is a lack of commitment by this current federal government led by Mark Carney to invoke anything other than more resource development, harking back to the days of Stephen Harper,” says the award-winning author and columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press. Sinclair says there are some bright spots. According to a Leger poll from Sept. 30, more than half of Canadian’s intended to take some form of action around the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The day itself was one of the TRC’s calls for action. Sinclair believes those are numbers you would not have seen just 5 years ago, so, while movement may be slow, it’s also happening in ways never seen before. Sinclair, who is a professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba (U of M), says there are a lot of reasons to be pessimistic about the world right now but feels it’s a remarkable time to be an educator. “If you just look around, there’s lot of reasons to feel like the world is burning. There are more Indigenous peoples in prisons, murdered and missing women and girls, Two-Spirit people, there’s lots of developments that have been very negative recently in terms of health, homelessness, addictions,” says Sinclair. “But then you get to see this huge opportunity taking place where this huge amount of students are making it anyway and fighting through all the different obstacles that our communities, within our communities, the policies, the fact that they still continue to be chronically underfunded in schools that many of our people go through, whether that be in city’s or on reserve, and they’re making it anyway.” Sinclair adds that that the U of M has more than 3,400 Indigenous students enrolled this year. That is an all time record and comes as the department celebrates it’s 50th year in existence. But it is not just Indigenous studies, Sinclair says he’s watching the future unfold before his eyes with an explosion of Indigenous students going into careers in dentistry, music and more, not just education and law like when he was in University. Sinclair, who spends months on the road speaking to students, educators, unions and other groups says he was given a masterclass in how to speak in front of crowds by touring around with his dad as a youth. His team as a high school drama teacher also helped him hone his skills but Idle No More is when he found his voice. “Idle No More Winnipeg, that was a really big moment for me and many people in the community where we really found our voice. We had always stood up against injustice, going back to 1990,” he says. “Oka was the most important moment in my life of understanding that there is injustice in this country, Indigenous peoples are being regularly targeted and we had to stand up. “We couldn’t stand idly by and Idle No More was the day in which I took action.” Read More:  Province of Manitoba challenges birth alert lawsuit over statute of limitations  Saskatchewan calls final TRC and MMIWG reports ‘patently unreliable’ in birth alert case  Sinclair, who’s collection of articles, Winipek: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre, won the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction, is working on a new book about “love.” He’s also working with U of M associate professor Sean Carleton on two books including one about residential school denialism. You can also catch Sinclair weekly on APTN’s Truth and Politics Panel. Continue Reading