Education, reconciliation and Murray Sinclair

‘Education got us into this mess and education will get us out of it.”

With these familiar and powerful words, the late Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, pointed deliberately and necessarily to education as the key to reconciliation.

This journey of education and understanding is one all Canadians should take to truly understand a dark chapter of our country’s history, the impacts of which continue to reverberate through communities and families. In response, the TRC offered a clear plan for education to blaze the path needed for a better future.

Every school year, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit students are welcomed into classrooms throughout Louis Riel School Division. This is a sacred trust placed in the hands of school staff, senior staff and the school board.

The calls to action issued by Justice Sinclair and the TRC, responding to the powerful testimonies of residential school survivors and witnesses themselves, must remain as the enduring plan and priorities that will guide this commitment into the future, for the seven generations that will follow and well beyond.

At the same time, thousands of non-Indigenous students come to our schools each day. These students too must take a journey and arrive at a destination of understanding, of knowing the truth, of learning and of respect.

As Justice Sinclair said, “students thrive when they are able to understand their history, and that in turn will help the relationship they have with other people.”

As a system and as a society, we have a responsibility to acknowledge the harms of the past and the present, and how they affected and continue to affect the lives of Indigenous people. Fulfilling the TRC calls to action compels us to teach non-Indigenous students the same Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, to promote the important outcome of setting all students on the right path for a brighter future.

Here in Manitoba, Mamàhtawisiwin: The Wonder We Are Born With — An Indigenous Education Policy Framework, was developed in collaboration with elders/knowledge keepers, interdepartmental government working groups of public servant representatives, and over 100 people from across the province.

Success for all First Nations, Métis and Inuit learners is the goal, while at the same time instilling hope that achieving the good life is not only reachable but guaranteed.

The TRC calls to action informed this framework, serving to guide enhancements to provincial curriculum, and to spur new school division initiatives, programs and hiring. This warrants collaborative efforts, courageous conversations and focused determination — for all the right reasons.

This is what Justice Sinclair invited Manitoba’s public education system to achieve for the common good of all people — and what communities across Manitoba have long hoped for: a roadmap, a blueprint, a strategy, to remove barriers, shrink gaps, create positions and develop networks for sharing knowledge and best practices.

One might ask — what this looks like in Manitoba’s schools in 2026?

Consider the new Indigenous language programs that are giving students the gift of cultural as well as linguistic expression; the graduation pow-wows many school divisions host to celebrate the journey of our students; the land-based learning and outdoor teaching spaces province-wide which instil in students respect for the planet that we are called as stewards to protect; the countless hours and days of professional development ear-marked for staff to learn about treaties, Indigenous culture and curricular learning resources; and the joint resolve of every education partner in this province to engage in collaboration and partnership to ensure that every student at every stage of their educational journey receives the knowledge, wisdom and experience that will achieve the TRC calls to action.

While many leaders pass from this world having made a unique difference in their own era, Justice Sinclair’s legacy will have lasting meaning given its impact on the reformation of our provincial, and indeed national, public education system.

In Louis Riel School Division, we honour this legacy by naming our newest school after Justice Murray Sinclair; Mazina Giizhik or “the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky.”

Sandy Nemeth is chair of the board of trustees of the Louis Riel School Division.